


New Friends, New Enemies

by ArcaneWeapon



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Clerith, Dark, Developing Relationship, Drama, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship, High School, Investigations, Mystery, Relationship(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:15:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27411823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArcaneWeapon/pseuds/ArcaneWeapon
Summary: A Clerith romance in a high school setting within the FFVII world. After transferring to Aerith's school for his Senior year, Cloud is forced to solve a dark mystery in order to be with the woman he falls in love with.Originally posted on FFN in 2007.  Completed in 2020.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Cloud Strife
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20





	1. The First Day

**Author's Note:**

> First off, I have to say I'm quite surprised that I'm actually writing a high school fic, I never really thought I would. I love the Cloud/Aerith pairing, but I was getting tired of bringing Aerith back to life. After all, there's only so many times you can do that before the stories all start blending together. So, stepping away from Lost Love and A Love Lost, I came up with this idea, and ever since then, it's refused to leave me alone. While this is a high school fic, it is still based IN the FFVII world, so I'm not taking the characters and dragging them into a modern-day High School. Regarding the characters, I tried to keep them as intact as possible, the largest change I made was obviously their ages, and even in that regard, I tried to keep them as similar as possible. I.E. Aerith is still older than Cloud, and Tifa is still younger. Other than that I hope you enjoy reading this, I'm certainly looking forward to writing the huge story that's slowly expanding in my head and demanding to be written down.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters mentioned in this fic, they all belong to Square-Enix.

Cloud stepped off of Fenrir and raised his shades to rest on the top of his spiky blond hair as he examined what was to be his new school.

' _Damn, why did Mom and Dad have to choose now to move to the big city? I wonder if they even thought about_ my _life when they made the decision.'_

Cloud knew his parents were eager to take up the new, better, job positions they had been offered here and he also knew, despite his negative thoughts, that they had definitely taken his feelings into consideration. He was just pissed off that he'd been pulled away from his senior year of school at Junon High and now had to start all over at some strange new school.

' _Nothing to be done about it now, besides sucking it up and dealing with it,'_ he thought sullenly. ' _Although starting senior year without knowing a single person is going to be really unpleasant.'_

His parents had tried to make it up to him with the gift of a brand new motorcycle, his very own, and he had to admit it was a pretty awesome gift. He glanced down and smiled at the bike that he had christened "Fenrir" after a wolf spoken of in legends, a name he felt fit it quite well.

' _I better hurry up or I'm going to be late'_ he thought as he headed towards the stairs that lead up to the entrance of the building.

He couldn't help but compare the building to his old school as he approached. Instead of bricks, this one was built of concrete, and it only had one floor instead of the two that Junon High had. All in all, it just felt way smaller than what he was used to.

' _That's right, Mom said this was the private high school in Midgar, the public one must be larger than this for a city of this size.'_

As he stepped through the glass doors, Cloud looked around for the office, figuring that would be the best place to start. Spotting it to the right of the entrance, he headed over and glanced at the nameplate outside the door before stepping into the room.

Barret Wallace

Principal

The office was pretty small with only one window, a desk filling up half of the room, and papers strewn across the rest of the room with some vague attempt at organization that was clearly failing miserably. The man sitting in the chair behind the desk currently working on some of the paperwork, seemingly unaware of Cloud's entrance, definitely did _not_ match Cloud's idea of a principal.

' _What kind of school_ is _this?'_

He was huge. Muscles bulged everywhere, especially in his arms, and his hair was cut leaving only what was on top in addition to a short beard. There was a small, silver earring in his left ear, as well as a tattoo of a skull breathing flames on his left arm. He wore a ripped, un-buttoned, brown vest, a belt containing various types of ammunition, and baggy green pants. By far the most unusual and striking part about him was his right hand. Or actually, it was his complete lack of a right hand and in its place, of all things, a gatling gun.

' _Oookay, this is definitely a principal I do_ not _want to get on the wrong side of.'_

Cloud cleared his throat before speaking up to introduce himself, "Excuse me I…"

"Who the fuck are you," Barret roared at him, instantly raising his head and glaring at the intruder.

"'m Cloud Strife," Cloud finished, his eyes widening as he unwillingly flinched backward at the anger in the man's voice and eyes.

' _Great, it looks like I've already managed to get on his bad side. That or he doesn't have a good side…'_

"So you're the new student ehh?" Barret replied, noticeably calming down. Somewhat. "What do you want with me?"

"Well, I figured seeing as how I'm new and all this would be the best place to… start… out?" Cloud faded off as the look of anger in Barret's eyes increased once more.

' _Damn! How does this guy manage to keep his job? On second thought maybe I'd rather not know…'_

"I don't know how you're used to having things run," Barret growled, "but I'm not here to help walk you through your day. If you have questions then find a student and ask them. I'm busy trying to run this damn school. Now if you'll excuse me, kindly leave my office before I'm forced to do something I think we'd both regret."

Not wanting to upset the man, Cloud quickly backed out of the room and tried to come up with a new plan.

' _Great, that went amazingly well. I can't believe he treated me like that!'_ Cloud fumed. Against his better senses, Cloud decided to go back into the room and get the answers he was looking for. Before he could take a single step, however, a voice spoke from the shadows behind him.

"I wouldn't go back in there if I were you."

Cloud spun around to see a boy roughly his own age leaning against the wall, looking at him in amusement. He was dressed mainly in black, with a red cape draped over his shoulders and a red band tied around his shoulder-length night-black hair.

"The name's Vincent," the boy said.

"Oh, hi, I'm Cloud," Cloud responded as he took in the strange metal claw on Vincent’s right arm, and the gun holstered at his belt.

"I take it you're a new student? Don't worry about Barret, he's always like that around people he doesn't know. Once you get to know him better I'm sure you'll like him a lot more."

' _Hah! Right…'_

"Anyways, I suppose I should help you out with the basics, come on, we can talk as we head to morning class, otherwise we'll be late," Vincent said, heading off down the hallway without looking to see if Cloud was following or not.

"Uhh, morning class?" Cloud asked, confused, before hurrying to catch up. "I haven't signed up to take any classes yet so I have no idea where to go."

"I suppose this would be a good place to start explaining," replied Vincent as they turned down another hall. "As you've probably already noticed, this isn't really a normal school. Instead of periods of classes, our days are split into two halves, morning class, and afternoon class. Morning class is pretty standard I suppose, we cover math, history, English, all the basics."

"And the afternoon class?" Cloud asked, noticing a sparkle in Vincent's eyes as he started speaking.

"Ahh, afternoon class makes morning class worth sitting through. After lunch, we move on to weapons and Materia training."

"What!?" Cloud exclaimed in surprise.

Vincent nodded in confirmation before continuing on. "First, Cid trains us in our weapons, and then afterward Bugenhagen teaches us to use Materia. To tell the truth, though, I'm not totally sure how this year is going to work out."

"Why's that?"

"Well, the first two years here are entirely devoted to morning classes, the freshmen and sophomores don't do any weapons or Materia training. Juniors get introduced to weapons, but only the seniors get to use Materia. So that's going to be new to everyone this year."

"Just how big is our class?" Cloud asked.

"Oh right, that's also something different with this school, class sizes are all super small, ours is thirty students I think. Since they're so small, everyone is pretty much together always. It can get annoying at times…" Vincent trailed off.

The two walked the rest of the way in silence, Cloud thinking about what he had just learned.

_Well at least if the class is that small I'll get to know people pretty fast. Weapon and Materia training though! Maybe this new school won’t be so bad after all..._

Vincent stopped in front of a wooden door and turned to face Cloud again. "This is where we have class in the morning, it starts in two minutes at nine o'clock, you should try and get here earlier though." He waited for Cloud to nod before continuing, "Most classrooms have a small room right before the actual classroom, for weapon storage, okay? _Never_ bring a weapon into a classroom unless it's Cid's."

Turning around again, Vincent opened the door and stepped through, Cloud close on his heels. He glanced around the room, inspecting the various weapons as Vincent placed his gun on a stand next to a few others.

' _Guns, swords, even a staff, but nothing close to my_ _sword,'_ Cloud thought, regretting leaving his blade at home as he’d figured it wouldn't be allowed on campus.

He noticed Vincent leaving, and followed him into the classroom, the small amounts of chatter that had been going on cutting off instantly as the two of them entered.

"Well, well, well," said a middle-aged man with short black hair, wearing a blue suit at the front of the room, "who's your friend there?"

Vincent merely grunted, "New student" before heading over to a desk in the middle of the room and sitting down.

' _Oh, thanks a lot, friend.'_

"Uh, hi… I'm Cloud," he said in introduction, slightly uncomfortable with thirty pairs of eyes staring at him.

"That's nice," the teacher drawled, "but please go take your seat, class should have already started, you can meet everyone at lunch."

The desks were arranged in six rows of five with a pathway down the center to get to the back of the room. The only empty spot Cloud could see was a single chair in the back corner of the room so he headed over to it, avoiding looking at anyone in particular.

' _Great, what's this? The dunce chair?'_

Cloud could hear people whispering about him, but he completely ignored them, trying to focus on what the teacher was saying.

"We'll be starting this year focusing on Calculus and some of the more abstract history of the world…"

The teacher was speaking in a monotone, however, and Cloud was already bored by the brief introduction.

' _Now I see why Vincent said the afternoon made sitting through the morning worthwhile, this is horrible.'_

Deciding this would be a good time to get a first impression of his fellow classmates, Cloud started looking around the room. By the way people were whispering to each other and passing notes, he could tell he wasn't the only bored one.

Other than some guy with ridiculously long silver hair and Vincent, everyone else pretty much looked like normal high school students. For some reason, he felt his attention drawn to a girl sitting in the front row. She was wearing a red vest and had her hair done up in a ponytail with a large pink ribbon tied into it at ear level. Other than that, he couldn't tell much since she was sitting down, as well as the fact that the guy sitting behind her was slightly blocking Cloud’s view.

He saw the girl sitting to her left, who had long black hair and seemed to be wearing black as well, pass her a note, which she carefully unfolded and read before raising one hand to her lips to muffle her laughter. She then quickly turned around to smile at the guy sitting behind her before turning back around, still giggling softly.

When she had turned around, Cloud had seen her face and he still felt stunned, his eyes wide open. Her pale skin was perfect with nothing marring the surface, her eyes were brilliant emerald green, and her lips were a faint shade of pink.

' _She's… beautiful…'_

"I hope you're paying attention, new student," he heard the teacher call out annoyed, "This material will be covered on your tests as well you know."

Cloud flushed in embarrassment as he heard people laughing at him, and he bent down to his bag to grab some paper and a pen. He spent the rest of the class taking notes, but he couldn't get the girl's face out of his head.

* * *

The bell ringing to signal the end of class couldn't have been a more pleasing sound. Glad to be finally done with this part of the day, Cloud quickly stuffed his notes into his bag and stood up to stretch.

' _Three straight hours of class is brutal, I can't wait to see what the afternoon is like though.'_

Noticing that everyone else was filling out, Cloud joined them, looking for Vincent. Figuring the best pace to meet him would be in the hall since he couldn't find him in the press of people, Cloud quickly walked through the weapons room. To his surprise, the girl in black who had been sitting next to the one girl was already standing in the hall, tapping her foot impatiently.

"Oh, are you new here too since you don't have a weapon?" Cloud asked, trying to strike up a conversation.

Before he knew what happened, he felt his back hitting the wall followed by two impacts on either side of his head as she punched the wall to lean in, her striking red eyes glowing hotly. This close, he realized her hair wasn't actually black, it was just a really dark shade of brown.

"I'm not some helpless girl that needs your protection," she growled softly, "and no, I'm not new, this is my fourth year."

"You show him Tifa!" someone called out behind her.

' _Great, another scene, just what I need.'_

"These are my weapons," she continued, removing her hands from the wall and taking a step back as she patted something behind her.

' _Her ass?!'_ Cloud thought in confusion at first, before he noticed a pair of black gloves tucked in her belt.

"Come on Tif, leave the poor guy alone," Cloud heard a girl say and Tifa nodded as she turned away.

"Let’s go get some lunch," Tifa replied to the girl who had spoken, and Cloud realized it was the girl who had been sitting next to her.

As he watched them walk away in the direction the other students were heading, he was better able to see what the girl who’d caught his attention was wearing. Under her red vest, she wore a white and pink dress that went down to the middle of her calves. He also noticed that she was carrying the staff he’d seen in the weapons room.

Cloud felt someone prod his shoulder and he turned to see Vincent standing behind him.

"I see you've met Tifa," the boy said with a small smirk.

"Yeah…" was the only reply Cloud could come up with.

"Don't mind her," Vincent said as he headed in the same direction the girls had gone, gesturing for Cloud to follow. "Tifa's always been the youngest one in the grade and she hates it when people judge her based on that. Regardless, she's damn strong so no one ever messes with her."

"I happened to notice that," replied Cloud as he rubbed his chest, feeling the bruise her blow to knock him into the wall had left.

Cloud followed Vincent in silence as they got into line in the cafeteria before getting their food and heading over to a table in the corner. He noticed Tifa and her friend sitting at a table on the other side of the room and stared at them, completely forgetting about his food.

"I see you've also met Aerith," Vincent said, laughing softly. "Don't get any ideas."

' _Aerith? Is that her name? And what the hell does he mean "Don't get any ideas"?!'_

Noticing the guy with spiky black hair who had been sitting behind her join them at their table, Cloud asked Vincent who he was.

"That's the reason you shouldn't be getting any ideas, his name's Zack."

"Oh… So they're like… together?" Cloud asked, feeling something stir inside him as he took a bite of his meal.

' _What? I can't be… jealous already? Can I?'_

"I’m not sure anyone really knows, even those two. I think they're still just really good friends at this point."

Cloud smiled and ate with more enthusiasm at hearing this. "Thanks a lot for all your help Vincent," Cloud said between bites. "If you don't mind, I have a few more questions about who's who if you don't mind."

"Sure, although I'm probably not the best person to be asking."

"Oh? Why's that?" Cloud asked as he stopped eating to look over at Vincent.

"Well… you see I'm…" Vincent started hesitantly. "Well, I'm really a loner. So I don't know anyone very well, but I'll do my best to answer your questions."

' _Vincent? A loner?"_ Cloud would have never been able to guess from what he'd seen of him so far.

Cloud gestured towards the boy with the long silver hair who was sitting alone at a table, "Who's that? He seems like more of a loner than you."

For a moment, Cloud thought he saw a faint flash of fear appear in Vincent's eyes before he responded. "That's Sephiroth… You're right, he is a loner and no one really knows much about him at all. He transferred to this school around the middle of last year, and ever since then, he's never tried to make friends with anyone. Other than that, he's probably the second-best student in our class, only behind Aerith, and a master of that sword he carries."

Deciding not to ask about the look he had seen in Vincent's eyes, Cloud pointed to a group of five people at a table making the most noise in the entire room. "And who are those guys?"

"They call themselves the 'Turks', I suppose you could consider them as the school's gang. They're remarkably good at not getting caught, so they've never really been punished, but whenever something crazy happens around school everyone knows it was them."

"Rufus is their leader," continued Vincent, pointing him out. "The others are Tseng, Reno, Rude, and Elena," he finished, pointing to each of them in turn.

Cloud nodded his thanks and went back to eating his meal, glad that he at least knew who some of the people in his new class were.

When he finished his food, he was surprised to see Vincent point back to the table Aerith was sitting at and speak up. "Since I can tell from that look in your eyes you're not going to give up so easily, that girl that just joined them at their table is Yuffie. She's in the grade below us but is still good friends with both Tifa and Aerith. Being around her can get annoying after a while though, she has far too much energy."

Cloud glanced over to see a smaller girl wearing a green shirt that revealed her belly, short brown pants, and some kind of unusual arm guard on her left arm had joined the table. Strapped to her back was a large shuriken.

"And just as a final warning," Vincent said firmly as the bell rang, indicating the end of lunch, "Don't get on Zack's bad side, he's not as good as Sephiroth but he's still pretty good with that sword of his."

"Thanks for the warning friend, but I can hold my own ground in a fight."

"I suppose we're about to see about that," replied Vincent, smiling as they headed to their next class.

* * *

"No weapon you say? Why the fuck not?" Cid demanded.

"I'm sorry sir, I didn't know I'd need to bring one. I'm new," Cloud finished.

"Well I suppose I could let you borrow one then," Cid replied. "What kind of weapon do you prefer?"

"Do you have a storage room for them that you could show me? I'm… rather picky about my swords."

Not questioning this strange statement, Cid gestured for Cloud to follow him into a back room. Once inside, Cloud was surprised to see every single type of melee weapon he’d ever seen arranged around the room, and even a few he wasn’t familiar with. His eye was only drawn to one of them, however, and he slowly walked to stand in front of the massive blade hanging on the wall.

"Ahh, a greatsword," Cid called out. "So you like something slow that hits really fucking hard, ehh?"

Cloud reached up and lifted the sword off of its wall mount with one hand before turning around to face Cid, noticing a slight look of surprise in the man’s eyes.

' _Slow? Yeah right!'_

Swinging the sword up to rest on his shoulder, Cloud walked out of the room. "This will do nicely," he said as he passed Cid.

As he left the back room, Cloud walked over to Vincent who also seemed to be surprised by something.

' _Damn, what's gotten into them all, it's not like this thing is anything special. It's a piece of junk really, compared to my Buster Sword.'_

"Well, now that that's over with, I just have a few things to say before you begin," Cid announced to the class as he closed the door to the backroom.

"Most of you know the rules already but I'm going over them again just to make sure. You're allowed to train on your own or in pairs, I don't care which. I'll be walking around the room helping and giving pointers. Unlike last year, there are no scheduled lessons, most of you have already become quite good with your weapons of choice so from this point on it's just perfecting your fighting style."

"One last thing," Cid growled, his voice dropping angrily. "If you do decide to train with another student in a duel there will be no fucking contact, do I make myself clear? No. Fucking. Contact. Break that rule and I'll haul your sorry ass to Barret and let him deal with you."

Seeing that his students had gotten the message, Cid gestured for them to begin.

Cloud glanced around the room, unsure of what to do. He knew a duel with Vincent wouldn't really work, but he didn't know anyone else well enough to ask them. Deciding he might as well train on his own he was surprised when Sephiroth stepped in front of him.

"I challenge you to a duel," the silver-haired boy said in a low voice.

Cloud noticed Vincent over Sephiroth's shoulder, his eyes were wide open in alarm and he was violently shaking his head. "Yeah, sure," Cloud replied smiling as he lowered the sword from his shoulder and gripped it with both hands, shifting his feet to enter a fighting stance.

Scanning his eyes around the room to make sure he knew where everything and everyone was, Cloud was surprised to notice that everyone had stopped whatever they had been doing and were now watching him and Sephiroth.

' _Okay, so either I kick his ass and impress everyone, or I get my ass kicked and earn everyone's sympathy. Either way, it's a win-win situation… right?'_

Focusing his thoughts on the man in front of him, Cloud mentally gauged up his opponent.

' _He's older than me but that doesn't mean much, he's taller which might give him a bit of an advantage, but then again it might make him a bit slower since he's bigger than me. That large black trench coat might work in my favor, although the fact that its sleeves are tucked into his gauntlets, and his pants are tucked into his boots, indicate that he's well aware of how hindersome flapping clothing can be. Those shoulder pads would protect from blows to the neck, but since this is just a duel they don't really matter.’_

"Well, are you going to draw your sword and fight, or are you just gonna stand there staring at me?" Cloud shouted, trying to provoke him. He heard whispers pass among the other students and even thought he heard someone say "Oh wow, Sephiroth is going to _kill_ him!"

' _Damn, everyone's terrified of this guy, just what exactly have I gotten myself into?'_

"Well, it seems you have more courage than the rest of our fellow classmates," Sephiroth smirked. "Since it looks like you're not going to run, let’s have some fun," he said as he slowly drew his sword.

Cloud's eyes widened involuntarily as he watched Sephiroth draw his sword. ' _No way, that thing has to be around six feet long!'_

"I wonder how long you can last against my Masamune?" Sephiroth mockingly questioned as he charged.

' _He's fast.'_ was all Cloud was able to think as he swung his sword to block the blow.

Sephiroth quickly stepped to the right and swung at Cloud's other side, figuring he'd never be able to move his huge sword to block him in time. To his surprise, however, Cloud easily managed to block this attack as well.

Cloud could hear the other student's talking much louder now but he completely ignored them as he focused his attention on Sephiroth, trying to learn how he fought. Once he thought he'd figured it out well enough, Cloud launched his own assault.

As the battle continued on with neither of the combatants able to touch the other, Cloud noticed a look of deep hatred filling Sephiroth's eyes. He realized that Sephiroth's blows were coming in much harder than they had before, and with much less control.

' _Damn, what's he trying to do? If I missed blocking one of these attacks he'd… Oh shit,’_ Cloud realized.

He wasn't the only one who noticed, however, as members of the class started yelling.

"Alright, that's enough you two, stop this at once," Cid shouted angrily. "I know you can hear me, stop fucking fighting!"

"I'd stop," Cloud growled in response, "but then I'd die."

As the fight continued, the two involved were surprised to see a spear suddenly stabbed between them, interrupting them and preventing them from continuing.

Glad to see his plan had worked, Cid glared at Sephiroth, "You're coming with me, the rest of you had better be training on your own when I get back you hear? And no more fucking duels for today," he finished as he grabbed Sephiroth's arm and dragged him out of the room.

Cloud dropped to one knee and planted his sword into the ground to lean against it, ignoring everyone else in the room as he caught his breath.

' _That's probably the closest I've ever come to losing my life. I can't believe he lost control like that…'_

He felt a hand rest on his shoulder and looked up to see Vincent standing above him.

"That was incredibly impressive Cloud," he said in admiration, "I've never seen someone move a sword that large so fast, much less someone actually hold Sephiroth off in a duel. I'm afraid you've made yourself a new enemy though. Sephiroth was always proud that he was the best swordsman in the class, he's not going to like competition for that position."

"I could hardly care less about being considered the best swordsman or not," Cloud muttered, still recovering from the fight. "What I do care about, though, is the fact he completely lost control and tried to actually hurt me!"

"I don't think anyone, especially Cid, saw that coming. Honestly, I can't believe Sephiroth did it, he had to have known there would be consequences."

"Such as?"

"Well, I'm sure Cid took him to Barret, you can guess what that conversation will be like," Vincent replied, raising one eyebrow.

Cloud smiled softly as he thought about that encounter. He hoped never to be in the same room with both Cid and Barret pissed off at him.

"I doubt they'll do anything severe since nothing really happened," continued Vincent, "but I'd bet on them putting him in detention for the rest of the day."

"Vincent, I told you to train, Cloud, come with me," Cid said from behind them, startling the two of them.

Cloud watched as Vincent walked off to join the other students around the gun targets, before getting to his feet and following Cid into the back room.

"Are you alright Cloud?" Cid asked him when they were alone.

"Yeah, I'm fine, thanks. What happened to Sephiroth?"

"That's none of your concern. Don't worry though, Barret's taking care of him. I have to say though, I'm quite impressed, I doubt even I could have held off Sephiroth for that long."

Cloud looked up at Cid to see if he was serious but didn't reply.

"I'm not joking," Cid said laughing. "That kid is far too good with his sword. You two will never be dueling again, however, I don't want a repeat of today, you understand?"

Cloud nodded. "I'm sorry," he apologized.

"Nah, it wasn't your fault, I could tell you fell back entirely on the defensive once he got out of control. I'm just glad you're so damn good, so I didn't have to call your parents to let them know their son had been mutilated on the first day of class."

Cloud laughed with Cid as the older man told him to put his weapon back and to just spend the rest of the class watching the others. "That was more than enough training for the day, you deserve a break."

As Cloud relaxed on a chair in the corner of the room, watching the other students practice, he couldn't help but feel his eyes drawn to Aerith practicing with her staff. He didn't know much about fighting with a staff, but what he did know about fighting told him that she wasn't very experienced with it.

' _It would seem that the other students aren't as crazy good with their weapons as Sephiroth is, that would explain why they seemed so afraid of him."_

He watched as Tifa walked over to her and the two of them started talking. He was too far away to hear, but to his surprise, by the way, they kept quickly glancing over towards him, he guessed he was the topic of conversation. Glancing around the room, he realized most of the class was actually shooting him an occasional look.

' _Well I guess not everything about that fight was a bad thing…'_

After several more minutes, the bell rang, signaling the end of class. The students filed out and headed next door to where the Materia classroom was. Cloud could almost feel the excitement in the air as everyone talked about what this new class would be like. He glanced around to see if Sephiroth had joined them, but he couldn't see the silver-haired student anywhere.

' _Damn, if that fight didn't make him hate me, then missing this class sure as hell will.'_

As the students entered the classroom, they saw that instead of desks, there were blue cushions laid out on the floor, each with a candle and a small green orb lying on the ground in front of them.

Cloud glanced to where Aerith was sitting, but all the seats around her were taken so he randomly picked a place in the middle of the room and sat down.

Once all the students had taken their seats, a door at the front of the room opened and a small, elderly man floated out.

' _What the!?'_

"Welcome to Materia training," the man said in a kind voice. "I'm sure most of you have seen me around, but for those who haven't, my name is Bugenhagen and I will be your teacher."

"In front of each of you is a candle, along with a fire Materia. For today, all you need to do is to try and light your candle. For some, it will be easier than others, but for your first day don't worry if you can't manage the task."

"Uhh, sir? How do we… use them?" a boy Cloud didn't know asked.

Bugenhagen blinked at him in confusion before responding. "Simply hold the Materia in your hand and focus your thoughts through it into the wick of the candle. It will take practice, but hopefully, you should start feeling energy building up inside the orb." Following this statement, he floated over to the light switch and flicked it off, engulfing the room in darkness.

Along with the rest of the class, Cloud reached down and carefully picked up his Materia.

' _Huh, fire? Doesn't feel hot, it actually feels rather cold. Focus my thoughts through this?'_

Cloud tried to do as Bugenhagen had described, but he couldn't feel anything happening at all. His concentration was broken by a small squeak of surprise, followed by astonished gasps from other students. He looked up and over to where the sounds had come from and was shocked to see the candle in front of Aerith glowing brightly.

Bugenhagen floated over and looked down at her, stroking his beard thoughtfully. "Have you used Materia before my dear?"

"No," Aerith replied, shaking her head. "When I followed your instructions though, it just felt completely natural and then the candle lit up."

"I see…" Bugenhagen mused. "Such amazing natural talent, quite impressive." He reached into a pouch of his lab coat and handed Aerith another Materia that looked identical to the one she was already holding. "This is an ice Materia," he explained. "Use it to put out the candle and then continue to rotate between the two. You seem to have a firm grasp of basic energy but extra practice never hurt," he said with a smile.

Turning to the rest of the class he frowned. "I don't see why you're just staring, if you want to light your candles and get your next Materia you better get to work!"

Cloud returned his focus to his own Materia, but for the rest of the class, he and all the other students minus Aerith were unable to create so much as a spark. When the bell rang, signaling the end of class, Bugenhagen gestured for them to stay sitting as he turned the lights back on.

"There are a few things I need to say before you all rush off back home," he explained. "First, don't get discouraged. It takes a while to learn how to use Materia, but once you get the hang of it the pace picks up quickly. I want you all to practice hard and by the next class be able to light your candles. Second, you actually aren't quite done for the day yet. I can't explain why, but you all need to head to the gym for a special event."

Cloud could tell from the surprised whispers coming from the other students that something like this had never happened on the first day of class before.

* * *

As the class entered the gym, they were surprised to see Barret standing there, holding what looked like a black box. Behind him were their other teachers, Reeve, Cid, and even Bugenhagen had somehow managed to beat them there. Sephiroth was already there as well, sitting on the floor in front of the teachers.

Barret gestured for them to sit on the floor as well before he spoke. "I'm sure you're all wondering what the hell is going on," he said, continuing when he saw their nods. "This year we've changed the way tests are going to work, it's going to be like nothing you've ever done before and we hope not only will they be more enjoyable, but you'll learn a lot more from them."

Cloud could tell from both his own feelings, as well as the other student's faces, that no one was very enthusiastic about new tests.

"We're going to leave it a mystery until the first one," Barret said, grinning evilly. "We don't want you to start preparing in advance. However, we do need to reveal one, key, part today. You will be taking all of your tests, and finals, in pairs."

This statement caused the class to erupt into noise as people lunged towards each other, trying to claim partners. Cloud knew who he _wanted_ to pair with, but he also knew that wasn't going to happen. Instead, he glanced over at Vincent who seemed to be one of the few still calmly sitting, and received a slight nod in response.

"Calm the fuck down!" Barret yelled, glaring at them all. "I never said you'd get to pick your partners! We're going to call out names randomly and those students will come up in turn and draw a name from this box, that person will be their partner for the rest of the year."

Grumbling angrily, the class settled down and watched as the first student, a girl Cloud didn't know, walked up and drew a piece of paper from the box. She called out a name he didn't recognize, and another girl stood up and walked over to her smiling. The two of them moved off to the side and sat down next to each other, away from the main group.

' _I just hope I get someone I know…'_

"Tifa," Cid called out.

Cloud watched as the girl in question bounced to her feet and went to draw a name.

"Vincent…" Tifa called out, looking at him slightly surprised as he stood up and went to join her. The two of them joined the others who had already picked but didn't talk.

As the pairing went on, Cloud largely ignored most of the names since he didn't already know them. Rufus was paired with Elena, Reno with Rude, and then…

"Zack," Bugenhagen called.

Cloud watched as the boy shot a smile over at Aerith before walking up and picking a name. He looked at it for a while before saying who it was. "Tseng."

There were only fifteen students left now, and the only ones Cloud still knew were Aerith and Sephiroth.

' _Wait, fifteen? We have one too many to perfectly match up, what happens to the last student?'_ Cloud wondered in concern.

"Sephiroth," Barret called out, breaking Cloud's thoughts.

' _Alright, I lied before, this is the one person I know I definitely_ don't _want as a partner.'_

Sephiroth walked up and drew a name from the box but he just stared at it without saying anything.

"Well?" Barret growled, prodding him with his gun arm.

"It's blank," Sephiroth said in a low voice. "There is no name."

By the shocked looks on the teacher’s faces, it was immediately clear to the students that this wasn't supposed to have happened.

"I know I didn't put in a blank card," Bugenhagen said.

"What do we do?" Cid asked.

"Fuck," cursed Barret.

To Cloud's surprise, he saw Sephiroth point directly at him. "It's his fault. The new student made us odd."

' _Yeah… he hates me alright…'_

"It doesn't matter to me, however," Sephiroth continued, "I'd rather work alone than with any of these weaklings," he said as he walked over to join the rest of the students who had already picked.

The teachers went over to a corner where they spoke privately for a while before they came back.

"We will continue," Reeve announced. "Aerith, please come pick a name."

Cloud felt a knot tie itself in his stomach. This was the last person he knew as well as the person he really wanted to partner with. He watched nervously as she reached into the box and slowly drew out a piece of paper. She looked at it in confusion before he saw realization spread through her eyes.

* * *

"Cloud," she heard herself say. At first, she hadn't recognized the name, but then she realized who it was.

' _That new student…'_

She watched as he slowly stood up, surprise clearly evident in his eyes as well. She noticed they were a bright sapphire blue, something she hadn't realized until then, as she hadn't really been paying much attention to him that day. He had spiky blond hair, strangely similar to Zack’s, other than the color, and was dressed entirely in black. His shirt had a left sleeve, but no right sleeve for some reason, and there was a shoulder pad on his left side. His pants were baggy but tucked into his boots, just like Sephiroth's.

' _Well I was hoping for Tifa, or maybe even Zack, but I suppose this will have to do.'_

She smiled softly at him as he walked up to her, and was surprised to see his cheeks redden slightly, causing her to blush a little bit as well. They walked over to the group of paired students and stood next to each other in silence as the rest of the class finished pairing up.

* * *

Cloud was in a daze. Sure, he had _hoped_ to be partnered with her, but now that he actually was he couldn't believe it. By the looks of jealousy some of the other guys were shooting at him, he could tell they were wishing to be in his place. He noticed Zack, in particular, shooting him a rather nasty look.

"Get to know your partners well," Barret announced. "Practice and learn together, on tests you will be working together and you will be graded together, so you gain nothing if you refuse to take advantage of that. That's all for today, we'll see you later," he finished, and the teachers left the gym.

Cloud was still deep in thought as Tifa and Vincent walked over to join him and Aerith.

"Wanna trade partners?" Tifa asked teasingly, making sure the other three knew she was just joking. "I think Vince and I will do just fine though," she continued. "He can blast things from far away and if anything makes it too close I can beat the living daylights out of em."

Cloud saw Vincent's eyebrows jump upwards, as well as his eyes slightly widen, at what he assumed was directed both at the nickname as well as the unexpected praise.

Not noticing the effect her words had had on Vincent, Tifa continued. "And you two will make a perfect pair too!" she exclaimed. "Cloud's a great swordsman and you just proved that you're excellent with Materia, Aerith!"

Both of them flushed slightly at the compliments and thanked her before Aerith made the suggestion that they head to the parking lot to go back home.

"I'm exhausted, I can't believe we have to go through this much school every day," Cloud thought.

"Oh, didn't you know?" Aerith responded. "We only have school on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the other days we have off to study and review."

"Oh right, I forgot to mention that part," Vincent added as they walked through the doors of the school.

Cloud was surprised by these responses until he realized that he was so tired he had actually spoken his thoughts out loud.

"Well my car is over there," Tifa said pointing over to the left. "Let’s share phone numbers Vince, so we can contact each other about meeting up sometime tomorrow, okay?"

Vincent nodded in agreement. "I'm parked over there as well," he said as he pulled out his cell phone and walked away with Tifa after they had both said goodbye to Cloud and Aerith.

"My bike's over there," Cloud said pointing. "Where did you park?"

"I'm actually that car right next to you," Aerith said in surprise, as they both headed over to their vehicles.

"I uh… guess we should share phone numbers as well," Cloud said, breaking the silence once they had reached her car.

"Sure," Aerith replied, as she pulled out her phone and gave Cloud her number while storing his own.

"I guess I'll see you sometime tomorrow, then?" Cloud asked once he had finished entering her number into his phone.

"Don't get any ideas," he heard a voice growl behind him as he felt something sharp poke into his back.

"Zack!" Aerith exclaimed, "What do you think you're doing?"

"You don't seem very upset to be partnered with this new guy," Zack replied, not removing the point of his sword from Cloud's back.

Deciding it was better not to get involved, Cloud simply stood there as the two talked through him.

"Should I be?" Aerith asked, a hint of anger entering her voice. "Cloud's done nothing wrong, why are you so angry at him?"

' _Zack isn't… jealous, is he?'_ Aerith wondered.

"I'm not angry at him," Zack lied. "I was just wondering why you took this so in stride and didn't even try to change partners. I talked with Tseng, and he doesn't care if he's with me or Cloud."

' _He is!'_ she realized.

"I'm sure we can't change our partners Zack," she replied. "That's why we had to randomly draw names. I'm sorry I'm not your partner but there's really nothing I can do about it. Besides, it's not like I can't still help you practice," she finished.

"Well, Cloud here had better not get any ideas," Zack said, removing his sword from Cloud's back. "Lay one finger on her though, or anything else for that matter, and I'll cut it off," he threatened.

"ZACK!" Aerith yelled, mortified, her face going completely red.

"I'm just warning him," Zack smirked as he walked around Cloud to stand in front of her. He bent down slightly to kiss her cheek, but she turned her head and gently pushed him away.

"I'll… see you later you two," she said, as she unlocked her car and got in the driver's seat before turning it on and backing out of her spot.

"Don't forget what I said Cloud," Zack called back over his shoulder as he walked to his car.

' _Well that certainly was a rather interesting end to a remarkable day,'_ Cloud thought as he lowered his shades and hopped on Fenrir. _'I wonder what tomorrow has in store for me,'_ he thought, as he revved the engine and headed back home.


	2. The Park

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to apologize to those of you who have waited five months for this chapter, thank you so much for your patience. I've finally got a bit more time on my hands now, enough that I think I should be able to somewhat regularly update again.

Cloud reached over and hit his alarm clock, causing it to turn off and also crash to the floor as he yawned and blinked his eyes. After lying there for a few more minutes, he finally threw off the sheets and stumbled to his feet, still not entirely awake. The cold water from his shower finished waking him up, however, and he started to think about what he'd do on his first day off.

' _I should definitely go train with Aerith, although calling her this early might seem a little too presumptuous. Maybe I'll try calling Vincent first and see what he's up to."_

Having made up his mind, Cloud walked over to where he'd left his phone next to his bed and dialed Vincent's number. After a few rings, Cloud heard Vincent pick up on the other end.

"Hey Vincent, it's me, Cloud. I was just calling to see if you had any plans for today or anything?"

"Oh, hey Cloud. I'm actually pretty busy today, sorry. Gotta do a bunch of stuff with my family this morning, and then this afternoon I'm going to the park to do some training with Tifa. What about you and Aerith, shouldn't you guys be training as well?"

"Oh… uh, well yeah I suppose so…" Cloud responded awkwardly, still worried about calling up the girl in question. ' _What if she just brushes me off to go training with Zack instead?'_

"You almost sound as if you're afraid of Aerith!" Vincent replied, clearly amused. "Trust me Cloud, if you're going to be her partner this entire year, you need to get over that and just call her up. If you want to set it up so you're there this afternoon, the four of us can train together or something. Anyway, I've got to go, good luck!" With that, Cloud heard Vincent hang up and stared at the phone in surprise for a second.

' _Well…. I suppose he does have a point, I guess I should give her a call,_ ' Cloud thought as he brought up her number.

* * *

Aerith had been awake for a while, lying in bed and just staring at the ceiling, thinking. She knew she should have gotten up a while ago, but for some reason, she just couldn't stop thinking about what had happened yesterday.

Zack had clearly been expressing interest in her lately, over summer break the two of them along with Tifa had spent a lot of time together, and she'd definitely started to return his feelings. But then suddenly, yesterday, with the appearance of this new kid, Cloud, someone she didn't even know, Aerith had felt something strange when she looked at him.

' _Perhaps it's just because the two of them look so similar…'_

The sound of her cell ringing startled her, and she reached over to her bedside table to grab the phone, glancing at the number to see who it was.

' _Could it possibly be Cloud…?'_

But it was just Tifa.

"Heya Aerith, Vince and I were planning on doing some training in the park this afternoon, I was wondering if you and the new kid had any plans yet or if you wanted to join us?" Tifa asked.

"Oh… well I haven't called him yet so…"

"What? Don't tell me _you're_ being the shy one!" Tifa interrupted, giggling.

"Of… of course not!" Aerith exclaimed in embarrassment. "I just woke up a few minutes ago, that's all. I was about to call him when you called me," she lied.

"Well, in that case, I guess I'll see you this afternoon at the park and I'll get off the line now so you can call up your sweetheart," Tifa replied teasingly.

"Tif! He's not my sweetheart!" Aerith cried out, mortified before she realized that her friend had already hung up.

' _She's got a point though,_ Aerith thought reluctantly as she brought up Cloud's number. _'Nothing's going to happen if we don't get to know each other.'_

* * *

Cloud was sitting on the end of his bed staring at his phone. He'd been sitting there for a couple of minutes, just staring at the number, trying to build up the nerve to hit the send button.

' _Worst-case scenario she says no right? That's not so bad. I just end up training on my own and I'm sure we'll still do fine on the tests. She trains with Zack, I train on my own. That's okay…. right?'_ Deep down inside, however, Cloud knew he was lying, he wanted to be the one training with Aerith.

"Geeze, what's wrong with me!?" Cloud exclaimed out loud angrily, before making up his mind and pressing the call button.

* * *

Aerith stared down at the number on her phone, not exactly sure why she was hesitating.

' _This is pathetic, get a hold of yourself and just call him!'_

Closing her eyes, she pressed the call button and raised the phone to her ear, waiting for Cloud to pick up. To her surprise, however, the phone didn't ring, all she got was a busy signal.

' _Whew,'_ she thought with relief, falling backward to lie on her bed, _'he must be talking with Vincent or something, I'll try again later.'_

* * *

' _Whew,'_ Cloud thought as he heard the busy signal, _'she must be talking with Tifa, I guess I'll try again later.'_

Cloud went downstairs to eat breakfast while passing the time, figuring that if it was indeed Tifa on the phone with her, Aerith would be occupied for at least an hour. Once he decided that he had given them enough time, he tried calling her back and was slightly surprised to hear the phone ring this time. Gulping nervously, he cleared his throat as he heard her pick up her phone.

"Heya Cloud, what's up?" Aerith asked, trying not to sound nervous as she answered her phone.

"Not much, I was uh… just wondering if you wanted to get together sometime today and do some training. Or something."

' _Or something, very smooth idiot,'_ Cloud thought.

Aerith giggled softly, putting her hand over the phone so Cloud wouldn't hear. "Sure that sounds good," she replied, "How about around one this afternoon after lunch, Tifa said she'd be there with Vincent as well."

"That sounds great, I'm looking forward to it."

"Oh, and Cloud? Sorry about what Zack said yesterday…"

"There's no need for you to apologize," Cloud replied. "What happened was Zack's fault, not yours. Never take the blame of others and make it your own."

Aerith blinked in surprise for a moment before responding. "You're right Cloud, thanks. I guess I'll see you in a bit then."

' _Well, that went better than I expected,'_ Cloud thought as he hung up and put his phone back in his pocket. Glancing at the time, he saw that he had an hour until he needed to be at the park. It was about a half-hour drive away, and seeing as how he couldn't think of anything better to do, Cloud decided he might as well head over early.

To his surprise, when he arrived at the parking lot, he noticed Aerith's car and saw her sitting on a bench a few feet away. Seeing him as well, she stood up and waved as he walked over.

"Looks like we both showed up a bit early, want to start training before Tifa and Vincent show up or just wait?" Cloud asked.

"We might as well start, I'm sure you need practice with Materia and I know I need more practice at using my staff."

Together they headed to an isolated hill, where they could practice safely and not potentially hurt any children who might be running around.

"Should we start with Materia training?" Aerith asked. "It sounded like we won't get new Materia until we've managed to use the one we're currently working on. It would be a good idea to have as many as possible before the first test I'd imagine."

"Sounds good to me, I wasn't able to do much of anything with mine during class and you seemed really skilled at it."

She blushed softly at his complement as they sat down and pulled out a candle she had brought with her. "Just like in class, close your eyes and try to focus your thoughts through the Materia, into the candle's wick, and imagine a flame."

Cloud sat there for a while, becoming more and more frustrated as nothing happened. "It just doesn't work!" he exclaimed angrily, opening his eyes and glaring at the candle as if it was somehow its fault.

"You need to be calm and clear your mind of everything, try again and I'll see if I can help a bit more."

Cloud nodded once, before closing his eyes again.

"Now, empty your mind of everything," Aerith said softly, "Just imagine a field of black, and floating in the middle, the green sphere of the Materia."

Cloud did exactly as she said, actually managing to clear his head as the sounds of the park around them faded away, and he could only hear her voice. ' _Strawberries… she smells like strawberries,'_ he thought faintly.

"Now, inside the green sphere, picture the candle except with its wick lit."

Again, Cloud did what she told him to, but he could tell from her lack of response that the real candle was still unlit. Frustrated, he tried harder, making the flame in his mind larger. He nearly jumped in surprise when he felt her hands grab his and squeeze them gently. _'Her hands are so soft!"_

At her gasp of surprise, he opened his eyes and was shocked to see the candle was lit. "You did it!" she exclaimed happily, smiling at him.

"Only with your help though," Cloud replied, somewhat dejectedly.

"Oh? And is my help that unwelcome?"

"No, of course not!" he hurried to clarify. "Let's keep going until I can do it on my own."

They spent the next twenty minutes lighting and relighting the candle until Cloud finally managed to do it once completely on his own. By that point, Cloud's head felt like it was going to split in half, so he suggested they move on to working with her staff.

"First let's see your stance, a good fighting stance can mean everything in a battle."

Nodding she slipped on some light gloves, picked up her staff, and stood up, gripping the weapon tightly and entering the fighting stance Tifa had taught her. "How's this?"

Cloud walked around her, stopping behind her before replying. "Not too bad although you definitely have a few openings. Did Tifa teach you this?"

"How did you know?" she asked in surprise.

"It's a fist fighter's stance, not one that works very well with a staff," Cloud explained. "Thankfully the two forms are somewhat similar, so it should be pretty easy to teach you the changes you'll have to make. First, we need to work on how you hold the staff though."

To her surprise, she felt him stand right behind her and wrap his arms around her to hold onto the staff as well. _'Omigosh, no he's not hugging me, he's helping with my stance. Not hugging me.'_

' _Wow… am I seriously_ hugging _her!? No, wait, focus Cloud. She'd react if you were. Focus on the weapon.'_

' _It feels comfortable… and so natural…'_ "Um… Cloud? How exactly am I supposed to hold it?"

' _Right.'_ "You just need to change your grip a bit, like this. And don't quite grip it so hard, it looks like you're trying to strangle your staff or something." He smiled when he heard her giggle at his comment. _'Good, it looks like she's not upset with me…'_

"What the hell do you think you're doing, you bastard?" a voice called out from behind them.

They turned around together, Cloud stepping away quickly when he saw that it was Zack.

' _Although he looks ready for murder…'_

"I thought I fucking told you not to touch her!" Zack yelled at him, taking two steps forward.

"Zack, he was just…"

"I'm not talking to you Aerith, I'm talking to the new student who was taking advantage of you!"

Aerith stopped talking in shock and glared at Zack.

"Why are you being such a jerk to Aerith?" Cloud asked angrily. "She didn't do anything wrong, I was just showing her how to better hold her staff."

"Oh? And why would you need to do that?"

"So that she can fight better? We're training like you should be with Tseng."

Zack dismissed Cloud's comment with a flick of his hand as Aerith addressed him again. "Why are you even here Zack? Cloud has a point, you should be with Tseng training."

Zack laughed. "We don't need to train, neither of us is worried about some silly test. Last years were easy enough, and if we get to work together on these they're only going to be even easier. Anyways, Aerith doesn't need to be better with her staff, I'll protect her from anyone who would hurt her. Especially _you_."

"In case you forgot, _I'm_ her partner, not you, so _I'll_ be the one to protect her," Cloud shot back.

"I think I'm _quite_ capable of protecting myself thank you!" Aerith retorted angrily, now holding a Materia in one hand, as the air surrounding the three of them suddenly got much colder. Having no desire to continue watching this… _manly strutting,_ Aerith spun around and stalked off, upset at both Cloud and Zack. _'Boys are so stupid!'_

"Listen, Zack, I don't know what your problem with me is, but I don't have anything against you. Can't we just be friends? Or at least not enemies?" Cloud asked.

"I don't want to be your friend. You're stealing Aerith away from me, I can tell already. Why don't we just settle this with a duel instead?" Zack suggested, his hand reaching for his sword.

"A duel!? Aerith isn't an object for us to fight over and possess! I don't understand you, I just want to be her friend."

"Whose friend? What's going on here and where's Aerith?" Tifa demanded as she walked up with Vincent, immediately sensing that something was off.

Cloud gestured in the direction Aerith had left in and Tifa rushed off, shooting an angry look at him and Zack. _'Great, everyone seems pissed off at me and I haven't done anything.'_

"Watch yourself Cloud, the other students may be impressed that you held Sephiroth off, but I'm not afraid of you," Zack said, before turning around and heading back to the parking lot.

Vincent looked at Cloud in amusement but said nothing.

Cloud let out the breath he'd been holding ever since Zack had mentioned the duel before looking over at Vincent. "Come on, let's go find the girls. Hopefully, we can just put this little fiasco behind us."

They found Tifa and Aerith sitting on a bench not far away. As they drew closer, Tifa stood up and walked toward them.

"Uh, Cloud… based on that look in her eyes you might want to…"

Whatever Vincent was about to say was cut short, as Tifa lunged forward and punched Cloud in the stomach. Hard.

Cloud dropped to one knee and struggled to draw a breath. _'_ Damn _she hits hard… and she's good enough to hit and make it hurt, but not cause any real damage."_

"I suppose I deserved that?" he wheezed.

"You're not to blame as much as Zack, but yes, it's still partially your fault. Besides, he isn't here for me to hit," Tifa replied, one side of her lips rising slightly.

Cloud laughed a bit, able to breathe normally again. "I guess I can accept that then. You alright Aerith?"

"I'm fine, I don't really feel like training any more today though. I'll see you guys at school tomorrow," she answered softly, before getting to her feet and heading to her car.

He could clearly tell she was upset, so he didn't follow her back to the lot right away. After a few minutes of watching Vincent and Tifa train, he said his farewells and went home, looking forward to tomorrow when he'd be able to see Aerith again. He just hoped she wouldn't still be upset with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to stress that I know Zack is being really damn annoying. I don't plan to continue this for much longer, he's going to come to a turning point eventually so please bear with me. Other than that, I hope you're enjoying the story, please leave a review to let me know what you think. I hope to have the next chapter out soon, although due to its nature and content it's probably going to be long and potentially difficult to write. I'll give you the title though, as a sneak peek into what it's going to be about.


	3. First Test

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha, okay, so another apology is in order. It's been like ten months now and for that I'm sorry. Most people have probably given up on the story by this point. It's entirely my fault, but it's also hard to find the incentive to write without feedback. I'd really like to hear what people think about the story. Anyways, the next few months should be pretty open, so I hope to get a few more chapters of this posted.

A week and three days had passed since the incident in the park, and Cloud was exhausted. Even though they only had class every other day, he felt like his head was going to explode. Not only did they have normal homework from the morning classes, such as English and Math, they also had assignments in both fighting and Materia. Cloud had been hoping to spend a lot more time working on all the homework with Aerith, but ever since the incident at the park, she'd been rushing home as soon as school ended and he hadn't built up the nerve to call her. He didn't really think he was at fault, but he figured the best thing to do was wait until she was ready to call him.

' _At least it's a Friday.'_ Cloud thought in relief.

Knowing how hard the students ended up working during the week, the teachers were generally fairly forgiving with the amount of work they assigned over the weekend. Seeing his friend's cars already in the parking lot, Cloud hurried inside, eager to get a seat next to them.

"We've got something very special planned for you instead of the normal afternoon classes," Reeve announced after the bell had rung. "Instead of heading to Cid's class like you normally do after lunch, please meet in the gym for an announcement." Ignoring the storm of questions that followed, Reeve turned and began writing math equations on the board.

"What do you think it is?" Cloud leaned over and whispered to Vincent.

"Not a clue, we've never had something like this happen before, maybe it's just some new Friday only class?"

Curious, Cloud could do nothing but pay attention and take notes while waiting for lunch to finally arrive. He did notice Aerith and Tifa whispering together a few seats over, however, and most of the rest of the class also seemed to be paying less attention than normal.

The bell signaling the end of morning classes finally rang, and everyone rushed out of the room, eager to eat lunch so they could find out what the surprise was. Cloud and Vincent went to their usual table and started eating while talking about what the teachers could possibly have planned.

"Wow, incoming," Vincent said suddenly, cutting off what Cloud had been saying.

Cloud glanced over to see what Vincent was looking at, and was surprised to see Aerith and Tifa walking towards them.

"Hey guys, mind if we join you?" Tifa asked.

"Not at all," Cloud replied, glancing at Aerith curiously.

She sat down opposite him and took a few bites of her sandwich before looking directly at him. "Look, I'm sorry Cloud, I've been pretty rude to you this last week. You didn't even really do anything wrong, I was just so angry at Zack. Will you forgive me?"

Cloud smiled, feeling elated inside. "Of course I forgive you, I figured you just needed some time to yourself and I didn't want to risk being burnt or frozen by trying to pressure you."

Aerith smiled at this, and Tifa actually burst into laughter.

"You guys seem to be having fun," a new voice said behind him and Cloud turned around to see Yuffie standing there. She winked at them and sat down next to Aerith, nabbing one of the girl's chips and popping it in her mouth. "So, I heard you guys have something special this afternoon, any idea what it might be?"

"No idea," Cloud replied in frustration. "What about you girls?" he asked.

Aerith and Tifa glanced at each other before leaning in. "Do you remember what the teachers said on the first day?" Aerith whispered. "They said the main reason we were all paired off was for the new tests… Maybe one of those is today."

"What!? A test already!?" Cloud exclaimed in horror.

"Oh wow, I so don't envy you guys," Yuffie said, putting a hand to her mouth as she tried her hardest not to giggle.

"Well we've only had two weeks of school," Vincent said, "It's not like it could be _that_ hard of a test."

"Hopefully," Tifa muttered.

The four of them finished their meal and said goodbye to Yuffie before heading to the gym with the rest of the class. To their surprise, they found a bunch of weird tables with what looked like four Materia embedded in the top. Each table also had two chairs, one on either side of the table. Barret was standing in the center of the room, along with the rest of their teachers and he beckoned the students to gather around them.

"As some of you may have guessed by now, we're going to be having a pop test," he explained, grinning at them.

The reaction from the students was immediate as most of the class began to panic. "What?!" "No way!" "Already?" "Not fair!"

"Shut the hell up!" Barret roared, quickly quieting the class. "This is going to be an introduction test, mainly to teach you how the new system is going to work. You're still going to be graded of course, but the main point here is just to prepare you guys for future tests."

"What's with the weird tables?" Zack asked, walking over and poking one of them.

"Those are the new testing system," Barret explained. "Bugenhagen will explain more about them in a moment. Before that, however, I want to discuss the general rules. As we explained on the first day of class you will be taking your tests in the pairs we already assigned. Hopefully, you've been working with your partners over the past two weeks and gotten to know them well. Cooperation and coordination during these tests will be critical."

Cloud glanced over at Aerith guiltily and caught her looking at him in the same way. The only time they'd worked together had been that day at the park.

"There are, of course, a few rules you have to follow," Barret continued. "The test in itself is similar to a maze. Each team will begin at some part along the outside and your goal is to reach the center. Various obstacles will block the way, and you'll have to work together to figure out how to proceed. It is also important to note that each team will have to cover the exact same amount of ground to reach the center. The difference between paths when they split is simply the obstacle blocking you. If you find yourself stuck on a puzzle too long, it may be wise to backtrack to the last intersection and attempt the one along the other path."

"You will be graded on both performance and speed, so you're not free to take as much time as you want, while at the same time you can't afford to be sloppy. In addition, since it is a singular maze there is a chance that you may run into another team during the process. Teaming up with them _is_ permitted, although I will warn you that while teamed up the average score of both teams will be awarded to each team. This means that a strong team will most likely lose points for teaming up with a weaker one, although it depends largely on the situation. It's up to your judgment to decide if you want to work together, but forcing the other team to do so is not allowed."

"Sabotage is strictly forbidden. If two teams meet up and decide not to work together, they must either wait for one of the teams to finish first or else backtrack. Additionally, any attempts to cheat and bring in additional Materia or weapons will result in an automatic failing grade. Other than what I've listed, you're free to do whatever you want. Are there any questions?"

"Are we only being tested on afternoon classwork then?" Cloud asked.

"No," Reeve responded, "approximately half of the test will be from morning class lectures, so I hope you've all been paying attention and doing your homework." Several students shifted uncomfortably at this.

Seeing that there were no more questions, Barret gestured for Bugenhagen to come forward.

"As Barret mentioned, the tables around the room will be how you are tested. All you have to do is sit down and place a hand on each of the Materia in front of you. You'll find yourself, along with your partner, at the start of the maze and when the signal is given you may begin. Now, please take your seats and enter the maze."

"This sounds like it should be interesting," Cloud said to Aerith as they walked over to the nearest table.

"I'm so glad I've done all the homework so far, you have too, right, Cloud?"

"Err, yeah, of course I have," Cloud lied. In reality, he'd done most of it, although he'd spent the previous day just relaxing around the house since he was so burned out. _'Ugh, it figures the day I decide to be lazy it comes back and makes me regret it.'_

Together they sat down and placed their hands on the Materia, unprepared for the wave of blackness that suddenly engulfed them.

* * *

Aerith woke up to find herself lying on the floor of a dark stone room, lit by a single flickering torch. Another shape not far away was moving, and she reached for her staff on the ground next to her before realizing it was just Cloud.

' _Was this supposed to happen?'_ she wondered, getting up and dusting off her dress before bending down to grab her staff and strapping it to her back before walking over to see if Cloud was okay.

"You alright?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. It would have been nice if they told us to expect something like this," Cloud muttered.

"Maybe it's just part of the test. Or maybe something went wrong…" Aerith trailed off in concern.

"Well, there's nothing we can do about it, where are we?"

"I'm not sure, I just woke up a few seconds ago so I haven't taken a look around yet."

Together, the two of them explored the small room they found themselves in, but it seemed like it was just a small square room without any way out. Aerith noticed that Cloud had his hand on his sword the entire time.

"If this is part of the test then I have no idea how to get out of here," Cloud said angrily after they'd made a close inspection of all the walls.

Glancing around one last time, Aerith was surprised to see something on the wall opposite the torch. "Was that door there before?"

"No…" Cloud walked over cautiously and drew his sword. "Stay behind me, I'll go first."

Aerith smiled to herself and followed as Cloud opened the door and went through. On the other side, they found a narrow hallway that led into the distance, lined with alternating torches on either side. After a while, they came to a fork in the path, the two ways onward leading off at different angles.

"Which way?" Cloud asked her.

"Well, Barret said it doesn't really matter so I guess we just pick one. How about right?"

Cloud nodded and glanced back, smiling when he saw her holding her staff as he'd taught her. "Don't worry, no matter what happens I won't let you get hurt."

' _He's so cute.'_ "Thanks, Cloud," she replied as they walked on.

A few minutes later they came to another small room, except that this one had a table in the middle. A cursory glance around the room didn't reveal any way to proceed. Together they approached the table and saw a piece of paper lying in the center of it.

"Who was the original founder of the Shinra Company?" it read.

"Ugh, a history question? I hate history," Cloud said. "Did we even cover this? I have no idea what the answer is."

"Actually, you're right," Aerith replied, slightly confused. "This is something we haven't covered in class. Thankfully it's pretty common knowledge around here. The Shinra Company hasn't been around all that long, actually, the founder is Rufus' father. I don't know his name though, everyone just calls him President Shinra."

Her response seemed to be enough, however, as a door shimmered into existence on the wall opposite where they had entered the room.

"This isn't so bad," Cloud said, a little cockily as he continued on through the new door.

Aerith was a little bit more hesitant, but she did have to admit that so far things seemed pretty easy. If all they had to do to reach the center was to answer a series of questions, it didn't seem like it could be that difficult.

"Remember, we're being timed," she said, as she followed after him. "Let's jog a bit."

Nodding, Cloud picked up the pace and they soon reached another room. Instead of a table with a piece of paper on it, however, there were nine pillars arranged in a square rising from the floor, each with a Materia on top. The Materia in the upper left was glowing blue, but all the others were red.

"What do you think we have to do?" Cloud asked. "Make them all the same color?"

"That seems like a safe assumption," Aerith replied, nodding. "You want to try first?"

Nodding confidently, Cloud stepped forward. "Since they're red I'll assume that means it's a fire Materia."

She watched him concentrate for a while but saw no noticeable effect on the Materia he was touching. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know, I'm trying to channel fire through it as we did with the candles, but it's just not responding at all."

"What if you try and use ice? That's the only other Materia we've learned to use in class, so if that doesn't work then we'll need to think of something else." She left it unsaid that she'd actually already mastered lightning Materia as well, outside of class.

"Okay, I'll try that, although I'm still really bad with ice," Cloud replied hesitantly. A moment later, however, the Materia he was touching, along with all the Materia directly adjacent to it, turned blue. "Wow, it worked!"

"Nice work Cloud," Aerith said encouragingly, proud to see how far he'd come in just a week. "So it looks like if you channel ice into one of the red orbs, it makes it and all the others around it except for the diagonals blue," she mused.

"This'll be easy!" Cloud exclaimed, grabbing another red Materia and concentrating again. This time, however, the orb and the other red ones next to it turned blue, except the blue orb that was also next to it instead returned to glowing red. "Errr, what?" Cloud asked in confusion.

"I see," Aerith said thoughtfully. "It looks like channeling into a Materia simply switches that one along with all the surrounding ones to the opposite color."

They also quickly discovered that they had to channel fire into the blue orbs in order to get them and their surroundings to change color.

"So, not only is it testing our ability to use different Materia back to back, but it's also testing our logic skills in order to figure out a pattern that will make all the orbs the same color. I assume that since the majority of them started out red, the solution we're looking for will result in all nine of them set to blue," Aerith concluded.

Grimacing, Cloud set about randomly changing colors, trying to get them to all change to blue through luck. After a few minutes, however, Cloud realized he was back exactly where the puzzle had started, with the upper left orb blue while the rest were once again red.

"I give up," he sighed as he slid to the floor, looking exhausted. "All that energy channeling has wiped me out too."

Aerith stepped forward and looked at the puzzle for a while before she reached down and began to change the orb's colors in quick succession. A few seconds later she managed to solve it with only eight orb changes.

"Wow," Cloud said in shock, eyes wide, "that was seriously impressive Aerith!"

"It wasn't really that great," Aerith replied blushing, but feeling really happy with herself.

To their relief, their assumptions had been correct and another door onwards appeared once all the orbs had turned blue. They ran down the next hallway to make up for lost time, and took another right path when a second fork appeared. A little later, they came to yet another room, except this time instead of a small square it was more of a long hallway, about twice the width of the ones they'd been traveling so far.

As soon as they stepped inside the seemingly empty room, however, a large number of imps, skeletons, and zombies appeared out of nowhere and began rushing towards them.

"Now this is more my style!" Cloud exclaimed, pulling his sword from his back and charging the enemies.

Aerith grabbed her staff and chased after him, but by the time she caught up all the enemies were gone, and the door onward had just finished appearing.

"That should make up for a bit of the time I wasted back in the other room," Cloud said happily as they continued on down the next hallway.

"I wonder if it's weird that we haven't run into anyone else yet," Aerith wondered out loud.

"They're probably all just way behind us, eating our dust," Cloud replied, giving her a huge grin.

' _I really, really like Cloud…'_ Aerith realized as she grinned back.

The next room they came to was identical to the first, another table with a piece of paper on it was waiting for them. This time it read, "What is the integral of four x cubed plus eight x squared minus five x plus 2?"

"What an easy math question, I've got this no problem," Cloud said with confidence. "The answer is twelve x squared plus sixteen x minus five."

"No!" Aerith cried out, her eyes widening as Cloud instead gave the derivative, but it was too late.

There was a large explosion, and suddenly there was a red dragon in the room with them. Before either of them could do anything, it swept its tail directly at Aerith. She felt it connect with her stomach, driving the wind out of her and sending her flying backward to crash into the wall. Everything went black when her head struck the floor hard.

* * *

"Aerith! Aerith please don't die! Wake up!" Cloud called desperately. _'I failed her! I may have killed her!"_

When her hand reached out and gently grabbed his arm and he saw her beautiful green eyes open, Cloud let out a sigh of relief.

"You gave the derivative silly, not the integral," Aerith said softly before breaking down giggling.

"How can you joke around when you're that badly hurt?" he asked as she slowly got to her feet.

"It's not too bad, although I'll be thankful to get out of here and have Bugenhagen take a look at my head," Aerith reassured him.

"I failed you, I got you seriously hurt. Zack was right, he'd be better at protecting you."

Before Cloud realized what had happened she slapped him.

"Don't you dare discredit yourself like that! You did the best you could and obviously prevented that thing from killing both of us. If I hear any more nonsense like that from you, I'll slap you again."

Looking ashamed, Cloud helped her to her feet and they continued on through the next door in silence. They only had to go a short way until they found a pure white door blocking their way. They opened it and everything was engulfed in white.

When he opened his eyes, Cloud found himself sitting at the table in the gym with Aerith opposite him, blinking her eyes.

"Congratulations, you're the third team to finish."

Cloud looked over and saw Reeve approaching them. "How far behind were we?"

"Tifa and Vincent just finished about a minute before you guys, although Sephiroth finished around ten minutes ago, even solo. That's not really important though, do you guys want to know how you did?"

They nodded together and Reeve went on.

"You got an A for your first room, your second room would have been a B since Cloud wasted so much time randomly changing the colors, but Aerith set a new record of only eight touches to solve the puzzle which resulted in another A."

Cloud smiled broadly and gave Aerith a high five.

"The next room was an A as well, Cloud cut through those enemies quite professionally. Your final room was where everything fell apart."

Cloud looked down at the table, unable to meet Aerith's eyes. _'Damn it.'_

"Mixing up integrals and derivatives gave you guys a D for that room, although the fact that Cloud actually managed to defeat the red dragon instead of retreating boosted you up to a C. In the end, with a third-place finish, your final grade for your first test… is an A, barely. Congratulations."

Cloud jumped a little when he felt Aerith's hand rest on his. "We did great Cloud, next time we'll even make sure to beat Sephiroth, okay?" she said encouragingly, smiling at him.

"Yeah, thanks Aerith."

"Now, I need to take Aerith to the clinic to see to her wounds. Cloud, please go over and wait with the other students who have finished, Barret wants to talk with everyone before people go home."

"Hey Cloud," Tifa greeted him as he walked over, "How'd things go? I can't believe we actually beat you guys. Wait, where's Aerith?" she asked as she noted her friend's absence.

"I totally messed up," Cloud muttered, shaking his head and looking at the floor.

"What the hell did you do to Aerith?!" Tifa growled as she jumped to her feet and grabbed his shirt by the neck.

"Stop it Tifa," Vincent said quietly, and to Cloud's surprise, she actually let him go. "I'm sure they've talked it over and it's none of our business."

Tifa still glared at him, but she sat back down and together the four of them waited for the rest of the students to finish their test. Cloud was very confused when Zack and Tseng ended up finishing in second to last place. He did, however, notice Zack shooting Sephiroth a nasty glare, which was returned with an arrogant smirk.

' _I wonder what happened with them…'_

"Aerith you're okay!" Cloud heard Tifa shout out, and he glanced over to see Aerith walking towards them next to Barret. She broke off to join them when Barret turned to head to the front of the class.

"I'm fine," she whispered once she'd taken her seat next to Tifa. "One little Cura spell and I feel as good as new."

Before Tifa could ask why she'd needed such a strong healing spell, Barret began speaking. "Now that you've all taken the trial test I hope you understand what the rest of the year is going to be like. Of course in the future, the tests will be much harder, and there will be far more than simply four questions. I also hope you learned how serious these tests are, any injuries taken during them are quite real. Of course, if it ever came down to a life-threatening situation, the teachers would immediately intervene, but the tests are designed to keep the chances of this actually happening very low."

"To that end, I ask you to get to know your partners even better and continue to work together. In the future, a single student will not be able to carry the team through the entire test, both of you need to identify and strengthen your weaknesses. For now, I know you're tired and you most likely don't want to be sitting here listening to me, so I'll end it here. Congratulations to you all and I look forward to the remaining school year. There's no homework, enjoy your weekend."

There was a thunderous cheer from the students at the final declaration and everyone jumped to their feet, excited to have an entire weekend free to do whatever they wanted.

"Party! Saturday night, my house!" Elena yelled. "Girls only!"

"Party, Saturday night, my house!" yelled Rufus in response. "Guys only!"

Laughing, everyone headed to the parking lot.

"Hope to see you this weekend!" Cloud shouted to Aerith as he backed his motorcycle up.

"I'm sure we will," she responded, smiling as she got into her car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really liked this chapter. The entire story was in fact based around this entire testing concept, and the basic idea for this chapter is what created the entire story. With this chapter, I was able to play around and figure out what I wanted to see in future tests, although I have to admit I'm worried about those chapters. It's going to be hard creating a longer, more difficult test that doesn't just drag along. The line breaks also didn't want to save for some reason so I was forced to use a double hyphen, hopefully, that won't continue in the future.
> 
> In regards to the test itself, the three by three Materia square puzzle is indeed solvable in only eight moves. It took me forever to design it, but the only other length I could find was three moves, which was far too short. Hopefully, I explained the rules of that puzzle well enough to be understood. If someone can manage to solve it in less I'd love to hear about it, please e-mail me the solution. (Remember, the upper left of the nine starts blue, the rest are all red.)
> 
> The integral question was included both because it amused me and because it seemed like a good question for a High School math section. In case anyone is interested, the correct answer is: x to the fourth plus eight-thirds x cubed minus five halves x squared plus two x plus an unknown constant.


	4. Guys Night, Girls Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's not exactly a quick update by any means, but it's certainly better than the earlier chapters. Hopefully, the rest of the chapters should come out on a more regular basis now, although college is just about to start up again, and I have no idea how heavy the workload is going to be this semester. To be honest, I'm also not entirely positive about the exact direction this story is going in. This whole story was really spur of the moment in the middle of writing A Love Lost so I don't have an ending already planned out. Hopefully, over the next few chapters I do have planned out, something will start to clarify. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter.

It was around nine at night when Cloud arrived at Rufus' house for the party, and by the number of cars already parked outside, it seemed like he was the last one to get there. After parking Fenrir, Cloud walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell.

The house was incredibly nice Cloud observed, as he waited for someone to open the door. It had three stories above the ground, and he imagined there was probably a basement as well. Together with the sprawling backyard, the whole property took up half of the entire block. By the light of the full moon, Cloud could faintly see the outlines of a full-length swimming pool, as well as both a tennis court and a volleyball net.

_Well, his father_ is _the head of Shinra, so I suppose it makes sense._

"There you are Cloud," Rufus said as he opened the door.

"Yeah, sorry I'm late. I had to take care of a few things around the house and I completely lost track of the time," Cloud explained.

"Don't worry about it," Rufus laughed, "you're only like ten minutes late. The real party doesn't even start until about an hour from now anyways."

Confused by Rufus' last comment, Cloud followed him inside to what he assumed was the living room, where he found Zack, Vincent, and the three male Turks.

"What did you mean by the 'real party' Rufus?" Cloud asked as he sat down on the sofa next to Vincent.

"That's right!" Reno exclaimed, "Since Cloud's new around here he doesn't know about it!"

"Last year after finals we did this same thing," Rufus explained. "I was just messing around, but Elena was annoyed and made her own party. Halfway through ours, we decided it would be a blast to raid the girls' party, so in the end, it turned into one big party with everyone having a great time."

"Sounds interesting, but why don't we just all get together in the first place?" Cloud asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It's more exciting this way, they don't really know when we're going to show up," Tseng replied, shrugging.

Reno looked over at Cloud with a wicked grin, "Yup, who knows what we might catch them doing."

"They know we're coming," Zack sighed, "it's not like we're going to catch them naked having a pillow fight or anything."

"We can still hope though!" Reno responded dejectedly. "Oh man, can you imagine the sight of that…"

Rufus rolled his eyes, "Anyways, the drinks and everything are all over at Elena's, I figured we'd head over in a bit, but first I want to hear from Zack and Tseng about what happened during their test. You guys took a lot longer than I expected."

"Sephiroth…" Tseng muttered angrily, clenching his hand into a fist.

Zack took it upon himself to clarify what had happened. "We were on our way to the third room when Sephiroth showed up behind us. He said he didn't want to wait on us to finish the next room, so he proposed we team up and then go our separate ways at the next fork. Tseng said no, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to have him help. I knew he was an ass, but I never thought he'd backstab us."

"When we saw all the enemies in the third room and realized it was a combat challenge, Sephiroth got a wicked grin on his face. He unleashed this massive attack that instantly obliterated everything, except part of it 'accidentally' caught Tseng and I. In the end, we took so long just because we had to recover after being hit by that one move."

"What?!" Cloud exclaimed angrily. "There's no way that wasn't violating the rule stating that you can't sabotage another team!"

"How did Sephiroth not get a failing grade if he did that?" Reno asked, frowning as he cracked his knuckles.

"After we finished, Barret took us aside and told Tseng and I that Sephiroth had apologized. Apparently, he hadn't intended to hit us as well, that he'd lost control of the move since he wasn't used to it, total bullshit in other words. Barret did tell us that they'd warned Sephiroth if anything like that happened again he'd be expelled."

"That guy really pisses me off," Cloud muttered, and everyone else nodded in agreement.

"So Cloud, what happened on your test?" Rufus asked, changing the subject. "I heard Aerith got pretty beat up."

Cloud saw Zack frowning angrily, but he ignored it and explained what had happened with the integral and the resulting battle. When they heard about the math error, everyone in the room, including Vincent and Rude, neither of whom had spoken that night, burst into laughter.

"Aerith seems okay with what happened, so I won't take it out on you," Zack said to Cloud, failing to hide his amusement.

"It seems like you've got a bit of competition for Aerith's attention now though Zack," Reno called out. "Before it was only Sephiroth, but we all know she hates him."

"Sephiroth is interested in Aerith?" Cloud asked in shock.

Zack nodded. "He asked her out at the start of last year, I think it had only been two weeks since he'd transferred to the school. She turned him down instantly, without even blinking an eye, saying something like, 'I'd never go out with someone as arrogant as you.' The look on his face was priceless. I still don't plan on letting you have her, however, Cloud."

"She's not yours to give away," Cloud said angrily. "It's up to Aerith to choose."

"Anything going on between you and Tifa, Vincent?" Tseng interjected, attempting to move the conversation to safer ground.

Vincent jumped slightly at the question, looking surprised to be addressed at all. "Oh. Nope. Just friends, she's pretty cool, but we both agreed that even though we're paired up for the tests, we're not really interested in each other that way."

"Things still going well with Elena, Tseng?" Rufus asked.

Tseng nodded, a smile spreading across his face. "Yeah, it's really great. She's amazing, can't wait to hang out with her tonight."

"Alright, alright, lovebird," Rude teased, surprising Cloud since he always seemed so serious. "How about you boss man," he asked Rufus. "Any girls throwing themselves at you lately?"

Rufus chuckled and shook his head ruefully. "Thankfully that seems to be mostly done with these days, if anything my position seems to intimidate them instead now."

"How about you, though? Anyone caught your eye?" Zack prodded.

Rufus looked thoughtful for a moment before responding. "Hmm, maybe one person comes to mind…" No one asked for more details, since it seemed pretty clear Rufus wasn't going to explain any further.

"How about you, Cloud?" Reno asked slyly, intentionally attempting to rile Zack up again. "Anyone, you're interested in?"

Cloud swallowed, glancing at Zack out the corner of his eye. "I mean, Aerith is obviously incredible. It'll be great to hang out with her a bit tonight."

Zack cleared his throat loudly, glaring at Cloud, but not saying anything.

"Why don't we go play some basketball?" Rufus suggested, sensing the rising tension. "It's still a little early, and maybe if we wait long enough they'll give up on us showing and have a naked pillow fight."

Reno punched him on the shoulder jokingly and they followed Rufus downstairs, where they found yet another swimming pool along with a racquetball court and the basketball court.

Since there were seven of them, they broke into two teams of three with Vincent saying he was totally fine sitting out.

"I'm really not a fan of basketball," he remarked, leaning against a wall to watch.

In the end, Cloud, Zack, and Rufus managed to win by a single point. Reno and Rude made an amazing combo, but once Cloud and Zack started working together they quickly caught up to the other team.

As they walked back upstairs to get ready to leave, Cloud asked Rufus a question that had been on his mind for a while. "Why aren't we having the party here? This place is pretty amazing."

"Dad's having a business meeting," Rufus explained. "He said it would be fine if we hung out here for a while, but he doesn't want the distraction of a bunch of teenagers getting drunk and making a ton of noise. Elena's parents are out of town for the weekend, and her house is pretty nice too."

"Elena's place is great," Reno agreed. "She has an amazing bar setup in the living room and there's a hot tub out back on the porch. It's a great party place."

A few minutes later they all left the house and headed for their cars. "Naked pillow fight here we come!" Reno yelled.

"You'd be lucky to even see one of them in their underwear!" Rufus shouted back, and everyone laughed.

* * *

Aerith smiled as Elena opened the door. "That black dress looks great on you Elena!"

"Thanks, Aerith, you look beautiful as well," Elena replied, wishing she could wear pink as well as Aerith was able to. "Tifa's already getting stuff ready at the bar, Yuffie said she'd try and show up, but she isn't here yet."

The two girls walked to the living room together, where they found Tifa collapsing onto one of the large sofas as she let out a long sigh.

"Tired already?" Aerith teased as she dropped onto the sofa next to her best friend, leaning over to hug her.

"Just enjoying the peace and quiet while it lasts," Tifa explained, resting her head on Aerith's shoulder. "It's going to be really busy in a few hours."

"I can help at the bar if you want Tifa," Elena told her, sitting down across from them. "I'm nowhere near as good as you are with drinks, but some help should be better than nothing right?"

"Na, that's okay," Tifa replied, smiling to show she appreciated the thought. "I really love doing it, even if it is a lot of work. You Turks are always the worst though," she said playfully. "I've been practicing since last time. This time I'm ready for whatever you throw at me!"

Elena laughed, remembering the last party, before replying, "I'll try and keep Reno in line tonight, it's great to see you so passionate about it though Tifa."

"Hey, there's always Cloud, I wonder what kind of drinks he likes," Tifa mused. Almost as an afterthought, she turned to Aerith. "Any idea what kind of drink he prefers?"

"We've been studying together, not drinking together!" Aerith exclaimed in embarrassment, blushing slightly.

Tifa was about to reply when they were interrupted by the sound of the doorbell. "Are the boys here already?" she asked instead.

"It's a little early," Elena said in confusion. "Rufus told me they were going to hang out at his place for a while, but I suppose they could have gotten desperate for our company already."

Together the three of them went to the front door, but when they opened it they found Yuffie on the other side instead of the boys.

"Hey guys, sorry I'm late," she apologized. "My parents threw a fit when I told them I was going to the Senior's party. Apparently, they think you guys are gonna get all drugged up and die or something. I had to wait for them to fall asleep before sneaking out my window."

"It's only nine, your parents are asleep already?" Tifa asked, confused.

"They're weird," Yuffie complained, shaking her head and leaving it at that.

As they sat down once again in the living room, Elena continued the conversation from where they'd left off. "So Aerith, how are things going with Cloud?"

"Err, what?" the flustered girl replied. "We're just friends!"

"Friends, huh? Well if you don't make your move soon someone else might grab him before you can. I think I saw Yuffie eyeing him the other day in fact…"

This time it was the younger girl's turn to blush and start stammering. "C-Cloud? I mean sure, he's pretty handsome, really handsome actually, but he's a grade higher than me and I thought Aerith…"

"How are things with Vincent, Tifa?" Aerith asked, trying to change the topic of conversation from Cloud. She wasn't entirely sure where her relationship with Cloud was at. She knew that she really liked him a lot, but she wasn't entirely sure of what he thought of her.

Tifa blinked in surprise before responding. "Unlike you and Cloud, Vincent and I really are just friends, which is exactly what we both want. He's actually a great guy, I wish we'd gotten to know him sooner than our final year."

"I don't know why you guys think there's something going on between me and Cloud." Aerith protested. "Yes, I've come to really like him a lot over the past two weeks, but I don't really know what he thinks about me and then there's also Zack… I'm just really confused right now."

"So there's something going on with Zack then?" Elena proded.

"No! There's nothing going on with Zack either." Technically she and Zack weren't even dating, although the topic had come up before. She'd gone out to the movies with him once last summer, but they hadn't even kissed yet.

Bored, Elena turned to Tifa. "Well if you're not interested in Vincent, then who _are_ you interested in?"

"Well, if Aerith doesn't go for Cloud soon then maybe him, otherwise… Rufus?" She blushed slightly as she spoke the second name.

None of the other girls were very surprised, however, they'd all known that Tifa had had a crush on Rufus since the beginning of their last school year. Because of his status as the son of the president of Shinra, Tifa had never actually made her feelings known, but since Elena was already dating Tseng, Rufus was still considered available.

"Why do you guys think there's something going on between Cloud and I?" Aerith asked hesitantly.

"Well we've known you for four years now, so it was pretty easy to tell you had feelings for him," Elena explained. "And he's most certainly interested in you, I'm actually a little surprised you hadn't noticed."

The other girls nodded in confirmation. "He hasn't been able to keep his eyes off of you in class this entire last week," Tifa added, rolling her eyes. "Although I guess it's not entirely surprising you haven't noticed, you're always so absorbed in your classwork."

"Really?" Aerith asked in surprise, a warm feeling spreading inside her.

"I think you two would make a great couple," Elena said. "You should really make an effort to talk with him tonight, let your hair down a bit."

Tifa nodded in agreement. "We'll do our best to help too, I'm sure Zack is going to be all over you," she said, shaking her head.

"Thanks a lot, guys," Aerith said smiling. "Things have gotten awkward around Zack lately, he's actually been getting way too pushy, and I'd love a chance to relax with Cloud and get to know him better."

"I think the boys are here," Yuffie called out from her seat by the window, jumping to her feet and peering out. "Yup, that's Rufus' car and I see Cloud on his bike."

"Alright, let's go greet them and get this party started!" Elena shouted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually like this chapter a lot more than I thought I would. At first, I only had Guys Night and the chapter was only a little over a thousand words, which really bothered me. I was originally planning on giving the guys and girls their own separate chapters, but I scraped the entire girls' chapter when I realized I didn't have enough to write. Combining the two into a single chapter with separate parts worked really well in the end. I also came up with a lot more plot while writing this chapter, which is really good. To anyone opposed to the Tifa/Rufus ship I'm sorry, it won't be a large part of the story by any means, I just wanted to give her a potential pairing. Elena/Tseng should be even more minor.


	5. The Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special surprise! An update within a week! This is easily my favorite chapter so far in the story. I've been looking forward to writing this ever since I came up with the idea for it, and I had a lot of fun with the dynamic between Cloud and Aerith here. I hope you guys like it.

Once they'd all arrived at Elena's house, the guys got together and walked up to the front door, where Rufus rang the bell. Elena opened the door after a few moments, and couldn't help but notice the dejected look on Reno's face.

"What, did you think we'd be in the middle of a naked pillow fight or something?" she asked, one eyebrow raised skeptically.

Seeing his face turn a similar shade as his hair at this remark, however, all the girls burst into laughter.

"Tough luck," Rufus said, lightly digging an elbow in Reno's stomach, while barely holding back his laughter before he walked into the house.

Zack went straight to Aerith, wrapping his arm around her shoulders as he followed right behind Rufus. Cloud thought for a moment that he saw her try and turn to look at him, but figured it was just his imagination. Slightly disappointed, Cloud followed his remaining classmates to the living room where they found Rufus, Zack, and Aerith gathered around a surprisingly professional bar.

"Come on Tifa, let's get the drinks flowing!" Rufus called out when he saw her enter the room.

Tifa gave him a huge smile, pumping her right fist in the air. "Who's up first? I'll be making drinks all night!"

Cloud walked over to the bar, following Tifa, where Zack just grabbed a canned beer while Aerith ordered a strawberry daiquiri, which Tifa made in the blink of an eye. Once they had their drinks, Zack grabbed Aerith by the arm and they walked off to sit on one of the sofas where they started chatting with everyone else.

Cloud spent the next few minutes in silence, leaned against the bar, just watching Tifa as she made drink after drink without receiving any noticeable orders. Each time she finished one, she'd call out a name and the person would come over, thanking her for the drink.

"It seems like you've done this a bunch before," he finally said, admiration clear in his voice, once Tifa had slowed down and was sipping on something of her own.

"Yup, I guess it started around a year ago. Before one of the parties I read a book on making drinks and thought I'd try my hand at it. Ever since that party, I've kept working on perfecting the skill. But enough about me, what would you like to drink Cloud?"

"Uhh, I'm not really sure. You seem to know what you're doing though, why don't you throw something together and surprise me?"

"Brave man, Cloud," Rufus commented, walking up to join Cloud at the bar as Tifa thought for a moment before she started to make another drink.

Glancing around, Cloud realized that the two of them were the only ones still at the bar. "Why's that?" he asked, looking back at Rufus.

"Last time I asked Tifa to mix something together to surprise me, I ended up passed out on the floor as best I can recall," he responded, laughing.

Tifa glared at Rufus and slapped his arm playfully, "That was the second party since I'd started making drinks so I was still pretty new to it! You were already plastered by that point, and the drink I mixed for you was a little too strong which pushed you over the edge."

By that time, she'd finished making Cloud's drink and set it down in front of him. "Try it, let me know what you think."

Looking at his drink with slight skepticism, Cloud took a sip. "Wow, this is actually really good, what is it?" he asked before taking a much larger swallow.

"It's a Sex on the Beach," Tifa explained, laughing at the name. "It's Vodka with peach schnapps, orange juice, and cranberry juice. I'm glad you like it, it's one of my favorites."

Rufus raised an eyebrow at the drink she'd selected, but made no comment.

Cloud spent the next thirty minutes chatting with Tifa and Rufus. As the three of them chatted, people would come over and order another drink before heading back to the main group.

Cloud could tell Tifa was having a great time behind the bar making drinks for everyone, and it also seemed that she was especially happy while chatting with Rufus, although it could have just been his imagination. On the other hand, Cloud wasn't having the greatest time. The drinks Tifa were making for him were great, and it was nice getting to know Tifa and Rufus better, but he also wasn't oblivious to the increasing signs that they wanted some time alone. Cloud wanted to be spending time with Aerith anyways, but every time he glanced over to check on her, Zack was still hovering around her. So when Tifa happened to point out to him that Zack was heading for the bathroom, Cloud leaped at the opportunity and headed over.

"Hey Aerith, how's it going?" he asked, glancing at the three empty glasses in front of her.

"Cloud! Where have you been, I've wanted to talk with you all night," she responded excitedly, slightly slurring.

"How many drinks have you had?"Cloud asked, amused. He was feeling a little tipsy himself after all the great drinks Tifa had made, but he knew he wasn't drunk yet. Aerith, on the other hand, seemed like she'd had a bit too much to drink.

"Just those three and this one," she replied, indicating the half-full glass she was holding. "I don't feel that drunk though."

"Oh really?" Cloud asked teasingly, "Why don't you stand up and prove it?"

Aerith quickly got to her feet in response, and unfortunately forgot to put her drink down before doing so. As soon as she was fully standing up, Aerith lost her balance slightly and threw her arms out to steady herself on Cloud's shoulders. One hand managed to make it, but the one still holding the glass accidentally threw the contents directly into Cloud's face. There was no way to dodge out of the way without causing Aerith to fall flat on her face, but Cloud managed to at least close his eyes before he felt strawberry daiquiri splatter all over him.

"Oh no, I'm so sorry Cloud!"

Cloud was about to ask for a towel, when he suddenly felt something small, soft, and wet, wipe his cheek. The gasps and laughter that immediately followed told Cloud that she'd probably done what he thought she had.

"Uhh, Aerith, did you just lick my face?"

The resulting giggling was all the confirmation Cloud needed.

"Will someone bring me a towel?" Cloud asked, the hint of desperation in his voice resulting in another round of laughter from everyone watching.

"Noooo," Aerith cried. "Don't waste it, let me lick the rest off!"

After a few minutes, Cloud finally managed to clean his face with a cloth Vincent had tossed him, while fending Aerith off at the same time. He was about to ask her if she wanted to go for a walk when he noticed Zack returning. Strangely, Elena seemed to notice as well and she jumped out of Tseng's lap and ran over to him. Just as she reached him she tripped, although to Cloud's eyes it seemed very intentional, and spilled her wine all over Zack.

"Oh no, I'm so sorry Zack!" she exclaimed, raising a hand to her mouth. "Tseng, would you help Zack find some of my dad's clothes that will fit him so we can get these ones into the wash?"

"Uh, sure," Tseng replied, baffled, as he went over to where they were and walked with Zack out of the room.

As Elena came back over to the group, Cloud could have sworn she gave Aerith a hidden thumbs up but passed it off as his imagination playing tricks on him. "Wanna go outside and walk around for a bit?" he asked Aerith.

"Why should I go with you," she asked, pouting playfully. "You ruined my drink."

"I think some fresh air will do you some good, plus the full moon is beautiful."

Nodding in agreement, she grabbed his hand and bolted for the door, forcing Cloud to follow her or else be dragged along. Once they were outside, they slowed down to a slow walk, although Aerith refused to let go of his hand. They walked together in silence for several minutes, both either unwilling to break the silence, or uncertain of what to say.

' _She's so incredibly beautiful'_ Cloud thought as he watched her walking next to him, illuminated softly by the full moon.

"You're staring," Aerith teased softly, breaking the silence.

"Sorry, it's just that you're so pretty," he admitted, causing her to blush. "I've never seen you in a formal dress before, although I noticed only you and Elena were wearing one."

Aerith laughed quietly. "I don't think I've ever seen Tifa wear a dress except to school dances. Yuffie probably would have worn one, except she said she had to escape from her house through her window and she probably didn't want to ruin it. Elena wore hers for Tseng, and I wore mine for…" she looked away, abruptly cutting off her sentence.

 _Me?_ Cloud hoped. "Well, I think you look stunning in pink," he told her, admiring her dress and the way it hugged her curves perfectly.

"Well you look handsome, even if you didn't dress up at all," Aerith replied, laughing.

"Hey, no one told me what kind of party it was so I just came dressed normally!" Cloud countered defensively.

They did another lap around the backyard in silence, Aerith now hugging his arm at his side, before they started heading back towards the house. "Let's take a dip in the hot tub!" Aerith exclaimed suddenly as they approached the object in question.

"We don't have swimsuits though," Cloud blurted out, instantly regretting it and giving himself a mental slap across the face.

Aerith just laughed in response and ran towards the hot tub. Cloud followed after her, glad to be able to spend more time alone with her before heading back to everyone else.

When he reached the pool, he stopped in shock as he watched Aerith quickly unbutton her dress and drop it on the ground before turning to face him, clad only in her black bra and panties. "So if I look great in pink, how do I look in black?" she asked, smiling wickedly.

Cloud was speechless; all he could do was stare. Her skin was flawless, and her underwear left hardly anything to the imagination. He felt himself getting excited and realized he needed to get into the water if he didn't want her to notice.

Blushing at her boldness, Aerith hopped into the tub as Cloud quickly stripped down to his boxers before getting in the water as well. He moved to sit opposite her, but she instantly swam across and sat next to him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Have you always been this bold and were just hiding it from me, or are you just completely drunk?" Cloud asked in amusement.

"Both," she giggled, "Although I probably did have a few too many drinks earlier."

"So you don't make a habit of jumping into hot tubs while virtually naked with guys you don't know very well?"

She sat up so she could punch his chest playfully, before returning to her old position. _'Only if they're kind, smart, very handsome, and you,'_ she thought, surprised at how natural it felt to be so open with Cloud. "So tell me about yourself then, where'd you used to live? What was your old school like? Why'd you move?"

"We lived in Junon, it was pretty small compared to Midgar, but still nice. It's a lot different from here though, everyone in town knew each other and no one had houses like this one or Rufus'."

Aerith laughed at that. "Just don't judge everyone's houses based on theirs, both their fathers are incredibly rich. Midgar is pretty big though, getting to know everyone in the city would be impossible."

"The school was a _lot_ more boring than ours." Cloud went on, answering her earlier barrage of questions. "It was just normal classes like our ones in the morning. I had to do all my training with my sword on my own time at home with no real instruction. I really love how this new school works now that I've gotten used to it," he finished happily.

"So… when you left did you have anyone special?" Aerith asked hesitantly.

"Like a girlfriend?" Cloud asked, amused. "Na, I didn't have one."

"What?" she asked in astonishment. "I don't believe you."

"Why not?" he asked, laughing. "I wasn't really interested in a relationship like that back then, or really any friendships actually, plus I wasn't really interested in any of the girls. I think I can actually sort of relate to Sephiroth because of that, if I'd stayed with that mentality I might have become a lot more like him."

"You're nothing like Sephiroth, Cloud," she replied firmly, a hint of anger entering her voice, hugging him tightly with one arm.

"Thanks to you, Vincent, and Tifa I'm not. I'm so glad I transferred here and got to meet you all."

"I am too." Aerith agreed, somewhat surprised just how deeply she meant it. "So why did you end up moving here?"

"A bunch of stuff happened," Cloud answered evasively. _I'm not ready to talk with her about that yet…_ "The main reason was because my parents were offered better jobs here."

Most likely sensing that he wasn't comfortable with the current topic, Cloud was thankful when she didn't ask for more of an explanation. "What about you?" he asked. "How long have you lived here?"

"I was born here and I've lived my entire life in this city," she replied. "The only times I've ever really been outside have been on school trips. Once I graduate, I'd love to spend a year or so traveling around the world before going to college."

"Where would you want to go first?" Cloud asked.

Aerith leaned her head back, looking up at the moon while deep in thought.

Cloud felt himself staring again, his eyes drawn to the contours of her face, the curve of her nose, before coming to rest on her lips. He wondered what it would feel like to kiss them, but knew that would be going too far.

"I'm not sure," she finally responded. "There are so many places I'd love to see that selecting just one is impossible. Maybe somewhere tropical?"

"Well, we've got that Costa del Sol trip coming up in a few weeks," Cloud pointed out. "That trip should be a lot of fun, I've never been there before and I've heard it's amazing."

"I'm really looking forward to that," Aerith admitted. "An entire week on the beach is like a dream come true," she finished with a loud yawn.

"Tired?"

He felt her nod against his shoulder. "A little, yes."

"We don't have any towels," Cloud pointed out.

"Elena has a bunch of guest rooms upstairs, we might get the rug a bit wet, but once we get up there we can borrow a towel from one of the bathrooms."

As he watched her get out of the water, Cloud saw her stagger slightly. Leaping out of the water, he caught her arm, steadying her. "Careful there."

"Thanks, I think I'll be fine heading up in just a moment."

Ignoring her, Cloud swept her up into his arms, enjoying her shriek of surprise. "Allow me to carry you to your bedchambers, m'lady," he said gallantly, making sure to grab their clothes as well.

Aerith was laughing hysterically as he carried her inside, unable to find enough breath to say anything back to him. For his part, Cloud was trying his hardest not to think about how he was carrying a beautiful, basically naked, woman in his arms whom he was very attracted to. Going up the stairs proved a little tricky, but Cloud managed to make it without harming either of them in the process. When they reached the first bathroom, Cloud set her down and they each grabbed a towel to finish drying off.

"Sir Cloud, would you be so kind as to escort me to my room?" Aerith asked, performing a mock curtsy with the towel she'd wrapped around herself.

"I would be delighted, your highness," he replied, bowing before offering her his arm.

Arm in arm, they walked down the hall in comfortable silence and entered one of the empty rooms at the end. "Thanks so much for tonight Cloud," she said, looking directly into his eyes. "I had a wonderful time thanks to you."

"No, thank _you_ ," he responded, meeting her eyes and smiling. "I had an incredible time as well. Do you need any help putting your dress back on?"

"I'm not going to sleep in it silly, that would get it wrinkled. I'll just sleep like this. Are you going to go back down to the party?"

"Na, you've tired me out as well," he replied, laughing. "I think I'll go to bed too, sleep well Aerith."

"What, you're not going to stay with me?" she asked, fake pouting, but making it clear she was just teasing him.

Cloud still felt himself turn a bright red. "No, I'll take the room next door."

"Goodnight, Cloud," Aerith yawned, dropping the towel next to the bed, before climbing onto it and pulling the sheets over herself.

"Sleep well Aerith, sweet dreams," Cloud answered, flicking off the lights and softly closing the door behind himself. He stood on the other side for a while, stunned at how the night had gone until he remembered he was still only in his boxers. Retreating into the room next door, Cloud headed to the bed but stopped before actually getting in.

 _I'm worried about leaving her alone, what if someone tries to take advantage of her?_ Making up his mind, Cloud got dressed again, left his room, and sat down outside Aerith's door. _I'll stay up all night…_

* * *

Cloud woke up the next morning when he heard Aerith calling out. Quickly standing up, he opened the door and rushed in. "Are you okay?" he asked in a rush, taking in the sight of her sitting up in bed, clutching the sheets to her chest. Her hair was wild and disheveled, and Cloud realized it was the first time he'd seen it not in a braid.

"Cloud," she said in surprise. "Um, would you by chance know why I'm in only my underwear?"

He laughed before replying. "Don't you remember? You ran off to the hot tub, and when I got there you stripped off your dress and hopped in."

Aerith turned bright red and covered her face in her hands when she heard that, the sheets dropping down, causing Cloud to turn his head as he felt his cheeks redden as well. "That's right, I remember now… But we, we didn't… sleep together, did we?" she squeaked out.

"No!" Cloud exclaimed, a little too forcefully. "No, I just carried you up here and went to my own room. Although, you did suggest I should stay with you," he finished, trying to lighten the mood.

"It's really cold," Aerith commented, shivering as she covered herself with the sheets again. "Why did you open the window?"

Blinking in surprise, Cloud glanced over and saw that the window was indeed wide open. _What the… I didn't do that…_ Concerned, he walked over and looked outside. _We're up on the second floor and there's no way anyone got past me last night. How is this possible?_ Glancing back at Aerith she seemed fine, so it didn't seem like anything had happened while he slept.

"Cloud, what's wrong?" she asked, clearly worried.

"Nothing," he lied. "I just thought it was a bit hot last night so I opened the window a crack, I guess the wind just opened it the rest of the way."

Aerith nodded in response, seeming to accept the explanation. "I actually don't feel so great, would you be willing to drive me home? I'll get a ride back here with my parents sometime tomorrow to pick up my car."

"Sure, that's not a problem. Won't your dress get ruined if you're riding on the back of my bike though?"

"I'll borrow some of Elena's clothes, go wait in the hall and I'll be right out."

Amused by her returned sense of modesty, Cloud stepped back into the hallway and closed the door. _Who the hell could have been in there last night? Zack? But how would he have gotten in? A ladder?_ The whole idea was ridiculous, but Cloud couldn't come up with anything else. _Maybe the window actually was slightly open already and the wind really did do it…_ Except Cloud knew he didn't believe that. _Someone else other than me was in that room last night, and I intend to find out who it was, and what they did._

The door opening startled him and broke through his thoughts, causing him to jump back to avoid being hit. "Now I'm not so sure how safe I feel with you driving me home," Aerith said laughing as she stepped through the doorway. "Are you sure you're okay Cloud?"

"Yeah sorry, I was just lost in thought. Are you ready to go?"

"Yup, let's say goodbye to everyone who's awake and we can head out."

He saw that she'd brushed out and re-braided her hair and was wearing a simple white t-shirt along with a pair of tight-fitting jeans. The sight was just as startling as seeing her with her hair down. He'd never seen her wearing anything other than her usual clothes except her dress, which was currently folded under her arm.

"You look nice," he said, curious if she'd still be happy to hear that, or if it had just been the drink.

"Thanks," Aerith replied, blushing and looking away.

Together, they walked down the hall and headed down the stairs. Right as they reached the bottom, some lucky fighter's instinct caused Cloud to jerk to the left while shoving Aerith forcefully behind him. The sword tip bit into his upper right arm, and he realized that if he hadn't heard the sound of the blade whistling through the air, he might have been seriously injured. Zack was on the other end of the sword, glowering down at him.

"I told you not to touch her and what did you do? You _fucked_ her. I'm going to _kill_ you Cloud!" Zack yelled, the smell of alcohol quite clear on his breath.

"Zack, NO," Aerith screamed, but he completely ignored her and took another step toward them.

Realizing that he was placing Aerith in danger as well, simply by being near her, Cloud quickly moved away, glad when Zack turned to face him. "Zack, we didn't sleep together," he tried explaining while backing up, but Zack clearly didn't care what he had to say.

Cloud had left his sword with Fenrir, figuring it wouldn't be necessary at the party, so unless he could get Zack to calm down somehow, he would be forced to fight unarmed. He knew that he'd somehow have to end the fight quickly, a lot of blood was flowing down his arm from Zack's initial cut.

To Cloud's horror, Aerith ran in front of Zack and slapped him in the face as hard as she could. "Cut it out Zack, Cloud didn't do anything to me!"

Shoving her aside, Zack continued toward Cloud, raising his sword again as he advanced. "I can't believe you'd take advantage of her while she was drunk," he snarled.

"At least I'm not some crazy stalker who used a ladder to climb through her window in the middle of the night," Cloud snapped without thinking.

That got Zack to pause, a look of complete confusion on his face. "What?!" Aerith shrieked, her eyes going wide, as she turned to look at Cloud in shock. "I thought you said the wind…"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Zack replied, seemingly telling the truth. "I was down here drinking all night. I haven't been upstairs since I got here."

"Cloud, what are you talking about? Please tell me you're joking," Aerith begged, her arms wrapped around herself.

"I don't know!" Cloud exclaimed angrily, as he collapsed into a nearby chair. "When I left your room last night I'm sure the window was closed. Granted I didn't check or anything, but I _know_ I didn't open it. The next morning when you called out it was wide open when I entered the room."

"Why did you lie to me about something like that?" she asked angrily, clearly hurt. "Were you planning on ever letting me know that some creep was in my room while I was sleeping?"

"I… I'm sorry," he apologized, unable to look at her. "I didn't want to scare you, but you're right, I shouldn't have lied to you about it either."

"Zack," she continued, rounding on him. "Enough of this, you're making me sick! We aren't going out and we never were. You're a great friend, and I like spending time with you, but lately, you've just been a complete asshole. You even attacked Cloud when he'd done nothing wrong. Even if we _had_ slept together, that's my decision to make, not yours to make for me. So please, stop acting like this and let's go back to the way it used to be, I don't want to lose you as a friend, but that's all you're going to be."

Too ashamed to reply, Zack slumped to the floor, nodding his head in response.

"Is your arm okay Cloud?" Aerith asked, taking several deep breaths to try and calm down.

"Yeah, it's not that serious, it's just bleeding like crazy."

"Let's go then, right now I just want to get home. This morning has been a nightmare."

Cloud followed her outside and hopped on Fenrir. "Sit behind me and hold on tight, I don't want you falling off."

She did as instructed, and Cloud drove into the street once he was sure she was holding on tight enough. "I'm really sorry about earlier," he said softly after a while, breaking the silence.

"I know you are," Aerith replied, resting her head on his back and tightening her grip for a second in the form of a hug. "I understand what you were trying to do, and that you didn't mean any harm, I just have a splitting headache and Zack wasn't helping. I'll need to apologize to him as well, although I meant every word I said."

The rest of the trip to Aerith's house passed in silence. When they got there, she jumped off Fenrir and leaned forward to place a quick kiss on Cloud's cheek. "I'll see you on Monday!" she called out as she ran to the front door.

Cloud sat there in shock as he watched her go inside before smiling and heading home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is possibly my favorite chapter so far, I had a total blast writing it. I'm also quite pleased to say that over the week it took to write it, I was swarmed by plot bunnies and have a pretty solid idea of where I want this story to go and how it's going to get there. I can't make any promises about future updates, however. School started this Monday and it's going to be taking up a lot of my time. I want to keep writing though, so I'll be trying my hardest to continue updating this. Expect the next chapter within two weeks or so. As always, I'd really love to hear from you about what you think of the story so please leave a review.


	6. New Faces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so most of you are probably going to be a little disappointed by this chapter. It isn't actually continuing the storyline from where it left off in the last chapter, as in it's not going to be jumping straight to The Beach chapter. I spent a lot of time thinking about if I really wanted to include this chapter or not, but in the end, I decided to for a few reasons. Mainly I wasn't very comfortable just skipping three weeks ahead to when the class trip is, but the other reason is that I felt this would be as good a time as any to introduce a few new characters that will be playing important roles later in the story.
> 
> A huge thanks to Ancielle for her help in beta-ing this chapter!

_The party sure was crazy,_ Cloud thought as he parked Fenrir and walked up the front steps of the school. _Hopefully, things won't be too awkward with Aerith and Zack…_ It was the Monday after the party, and Cloud hadn't seen either of them since.

As he walked through the front doors of the school, Cloud heard a strange noise coming from Barret's office. Against his better instincts, Cloud decided to investigate so he walked over and opened the door before peaking inside. He was surprised to see Barret standing in the middle of the room, holding a young, laughing girl in the air and spinning her around over his head. Even more surprising, Barret was also smiling and laughing, which was the sound Cloud hadn't been able to place before.

The moment Barret noticed Cloud in the doorway, however, he set the girl down and directed his usual glower at him. Before he started speaking, he covered the girl's ears with his thumb and middle finger, able to do it with his one hand since it was so large compared to her head.

"The next time you fucking come into my office without knocking, Cloud, I swear I will kick your sorry ass so hard you won't know what the hell hit you," he yelled, although he made sure it wasn't so loud that the girl would still be able to hear it.

"I'm sorry sir, I was just…" Cloud stammered, but Barret cut him off before he could finish.

"I don't care what kind of lame-ass excuse you might have, just make sure it doesn't happen again," he growled. "Oh, and uh, you better not talk about anything you saw or else…"

"I understand. Sorry, I promise it won't happen again!" Cloud said in a rush as he jumped backward and slammed the door shut. "Wow…"

"So, I see you've met Marlene."

Cloud turned around and saw Tifa smiling at him. "Marlene? Who's that?"

"The little girl with Barret, she's his daughter."

"What?" Cloud exclaimed in shock. "Barret's married?"

"That's right, although his wife actually passed away two years ago. Barret doesn't like people to think he has a soft side though, so he tries to hide it. Everyone knows about Marlene, however, so you can ignore whatever threat I'm sure he made."

"That's a relief."

"Hey you two, what's going on?" Aerith asked, having just walked in through the front doors.

"Not much," Tifa replied. "Cloud just walked in on Barret playing with Marlene, it was pretty amusing."

"Oh, you've met her now! Isn't she so adorable? I've babysat her in the past a few times when Myrna was still alive," Aerith explained.

Before Cloud could reply, the bell rang indicating that classes were starting in five minutes. The three of them hurried for the classroom so they could get seats next to each other.

* * *

_One week later_

* * *

Hand in hand, Cloud and Aerith walked into the weapons training room. Cloud felt that things between him and Aerith were going pretty well now. They weren't officially dating yet, but it was assumed among all their friends. Cloud wasn't sure what exactly he was waiting for before he asked her out, but lately, he'd been considering doing it during the upcoming class trip.

Thankfully, Zack seemed to have accepted the fact as well. Lately, he'd been hanging out more and more with the two of them, and Cloud was already considering him a good friend. Once Zack had stopped being so possessive over Aerith, he and Cloud had found out that they actually shared a pretty similar list of interests.

As Cloud and Aerith walked over to a corner of the room to practice in, Cloud noticed Cid talking to a woman he'd never seen before. Since Aerith made no mention of it he just ignored it and started to train with her.

When they took a small break after a few minutes, however, he couldn't contain his curiosity any longer. "Who's that woman talking with Cid?"

"Hmm? Oh, that's right, I forgot you haven't met her yet. That's Shera, she's Cid's wife."

"What? Cid's married too?" Cloud exclaimed, a little too loudly.

Shera started to laugh, but Cid turned to face them and frowned at Cloud. "Something wrong with that?" he asked

"No, not at all!" Cloud said quickly. "You just didn't seem like…"

"The type of person anyone would ever marry? Well, Shera's a little insane, what can I say?"

"I am not!" Shera exclaimed, still laughing. "Once you get over the occasional swearing and smoking Cid's actually a wonderful person," she said to Cloud.

"What? I am not!" Cid declared indignantly. "I'm a mean bastard here to teach kids the basics about fighting so they don't go and get themselves killed. I hate 'em all."

Everyone in the room laughed at that.

"I don't mean to be rude," Aerith began, "but why are you here today Shera? It's pretty rare for you to actually come to the school."

"I know, I needed to talk to Cid about some of the disturbances in the poorer districts of the city."

"What's going on?" Cloud asked.

"Crime is just a lot higher than it usually is for some reason. There have been a lot of burglaries lately and even one fire, although, thankfully, no one has been hurt so far."

"I still don't see what the fuck I'm supposed to do about it…" Cid muttered.

"They just want your help investigating the matter whenever you have time to spare," Shera said. "You're highly respected by everyone there and they're really interested in your take on what's going on."

"Shera works at the police station," Aerith whispered to Cloud in explanation.

"Right, right, I'll see what I can do," Cid sighed.

"Thanks!" Shera said happily, giving Cid a hug before heading for the door. "I've got to get back to work now, good luck with your training, everyone!"

"Take care!" Aerith called out before she and Cloud went back to training.

* * *

_One week later_

* * *

Together, Cloud and Aerith walked into their final Materia class of the week, both excited for it to end since the class trip was starting next week. Several steps into the room, Cloud noticed a seemingly new addition.

"Look, Bugenhagen got a new rug," he commented, pointing at the red object on the floor.

"I am not a rug," the not-a-rug replied as it stood up on four legs.

Cloud protectively thrust out his arm to prevent the creature from being able to reach Aerith without getting past him first. He was shocked to notice that it also had a tail, which seemed to be on fire. To his surprise, Aerith burst into laughter behind him and walked past his arm so she could pet the creature's head.

"This is Red, Cloud. He's Bugenhagen's companion."

"Although I prefer to be called Nanaki, Red is just a nickname the kids came up with," Nanaki responded, purring softly in response to Aerith's petting.

"First Barret brings Marlene to the school, then Shera shows up asking Cid for help, and now you. Something big is going on, isn't it Red?" Aerith asked in concern.

"We aren't certain," Nanaki responded evasively. "I can't tell you very much about it, but I suppose it's pointless to try and keep you completely in the dark since you've already noticed as much as you have."

"Okay, so what exactly is going on?" Cloud asked.

"As you may have noticed, or heard about, things out in the city have become much more turbulent than usual in a surprisingly short amount of time. We don't know if it's simply a series of events chained together, or if some group or organization is directing it all. The one thing we do know is it's bad. The Shinra Company has just recently started investigating, but…"

"Enough Nanaki!" Bugenhagen said sharply as he entered the room. "Everyone tells me how amazing it must be to have a cat that can talk as a companion, but when his tongue is so loose, I often view it more as a curse."

"I'm sorry," Nanaki apologized. "I just felt they should know at least the basics of what's going on."

"I know my friend, but for now they need to focus on studying and learning. Outside information such as this will only serve to distract them, but you are right. Sometime in the future, if this continues to escalate, we may need to request their help as well. For now, however, everyone please take your seats. Today, we begin work on advanced Materia such as Fira."

"Think we should start investigating?" Cloud whispered to Aerith as he sat down next to her.

"Absolutely not," she replied firmly. "Bugenhagen is right, this is something for them to handle, we need to focus on learning as much as we can for now."

Cloud sighed in disappointment and started listening as Bugenhagen began explaining about how higher-level Materia was more difficult to control.

When the class ended, everyone hurried to the auditorium where Barret was waiting for them.

"As I'm sure all of you already know the class trip begins on Monday."

All the students let out a cheer.

"And as I'm sure you already also know where we're going, thanks to a certain unnamed someone," Barret growled as he looked over at Cid "make sure to pack for the beach."

"I'm so excited!" Aerith exclaimed. "An entire week relaxing on the beach, it's like a dream come true."

"It's going to be so awesome," Tifa agreed.

"There won't be any school work or anything like that," Barret continued. "This is meant to be a small break from your studies to reward you for all the hard effort so far. I'll see you early Monday morning in front of the school," he finished.

"Well, guys, I guess I'll see you Monday morning," Cloud said as they started to leave the school. "I have a bunch of stuff I need to do around the house, not including packing, before we leave, so I won't be able to hang out this weekend," he explained.

"Alright, take care Cloud," Aerith said, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. "I'll see you on Monday!"

"See you then," Tifa and Vincent both called out as they headed to their cars as well.

Cloud started up Fenrir and headed home, eager for the weekend to be over so he could spend time with all his new friends on the beach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's very short, at least compared to the other chapters, but I think from this point on most of the chapters will be. (Although they should be longer than this one at least.) It's either shorter chapters with faster updates or longer chapters with slower updates, so if people really care, let me know. I did manage to tie in the beginning of the main plotline into this chapter though, so in the end, this is actually more of a real chapter although I'm going to leave it titled as an intermission. Hopefully, it wasn't too boring. I'd also like to thank everyone who's left a review, it really means a lot to me.


	7. The Beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter took so long; College is taking up a vast amount of my time right now. The good news is that Fall Break is right around the corner, so I'm hoping to not only get the next chapter out somewhat soon, but it should also be pretty long. As always, a huge thanks to the readers who take the time to leave a review, I really appreciate it.
> 
> Many thanks to the -wonderful- Ancielle for helping to beta this chapter.

After a short, but boring ride from the port, Cloud and his classmates finally arrived at the mini beach resort they'd be staying at for the coming week. Earlier that morning, they had all arrived bright and early at the school and piled into one of the school's buses. From there, they had traveled west to Midgar's harbor, where they boarded a ferry and sailed to the other continent where Costa del Sol was located. Cloud was actually surprised by how fast the trip had been. Since they'd left so early in the morning, they had managed to arrive shortly after noon, meaning that it looked like they would get a chance to visit the beach on their first day. To the student's dismay, however, Cid stopped them as soon as they were off the bus.

"I know you're all excited to get down to the beach, but before that, we need to show you guys where you're staying and list a few of the rules," he explained, indicating for them to follow him. "You'll be staying here in these condos, one for the boys, and one for the girls," he told them, pointing at the buildings they were walking towards. "Curfew is at midnight, if you're found outside your room after that point the punishment will be severe. You'll also be cooking your own dinners as well, tonight the girls will cook, and then you'll rotate each night after that. There's a communal hall between the two condos, where you can eat your meals and hang out. That should be all for now, go have some fun and enjoy the beach!"

At that, all the students broke off and rushed to their respective dorms, excited to change into their swimsuits and get to the beach. As Cloud ran through the halls, looking for an empty room, he noticed that the place was incredibly nice. Once he found a room that none of the other guys had claimed, he quickly changed into his swimsuit, which was black with a howling silver wolf on each leg.

When he was finished changing, he joined Vincent, Rufus, and the male Turks in the common room to wait for the girls. Noticing a person missing, he couldn't help but ask: "Where's Sephiroth?"

"I saw him go into his room and heard him lock the door, guess he isn't interested in the beach," Rufus replied.

A few minutes later, the girls entered the room, each carrying a towel and wearing a bikini: Aerith in pink, Tifa in black, Yuffie in yellow, and Elena in red.

"Towels?" Reno asked. "You don't need towels, the sun will dry you off!"

"They're for sunbathing, you idiot," Elena replied, rolling her eyes.

"What?" Reno exclaimed in shock. "We're not going to the beach to do boring stuff like sunbathe, we have to play in the water and make sandcastles and stuff!"

The girls just laughed at that before walking out the door followed shortly after by the guys. True to their word, once they reached the beach, the girls laid out their towels next to each other and began sunbathing, ignoring the guys' pleas.

"Well if they want to be boring sticks in the mud like that, then there's nothing we can do," commented Zack. "Let's just have fun without them. Who's up for some body-surfing?"

For the next half hour, the guys messed around in the water, seeing who could body surf the largest wave and the like. Everyone was clearly disappointed, though, by the fact that the girls weren't participating as well. No one made a comment when Reno suddenly ran back to the condos, but when they saw him running back carrying several buckets they all got out of the water and gathered around him.

"I've been thinking about it long and hard since we got down here, and it's just not fair that the girls are doing this, right?" Reno whispered.

"I don't necessarily agree," Rufus said cautiously, "but what exactly are you planning to do about it?"

Reno snuck a furtive glance towards the girls before responding. "Well, we've left them alone for a good forty minutes now, I'm sure they're really warm and comfortable by this point. I went and grabbed all these buckets so, well, I'm sure you can figure out the rest," he finished, grinning wickedly.

"No," Zack stated firmly, shaking his head in horror. "No way in hell. Do you know what they'd do to us! We'd be lucky if we got off with only a few missing appendages."

"Oh, come on, it's only a little fun and games," Cloud replied, laughing. "I like the plan, it sounds awesome. Who else is in?"

After a bit of persuading Cloud and Reno finally managed to get everyone to agree to participate, and each of them grabbed a bucket. Once they had filled them full of cold seawater, they stealthily crept up to where the girls were laying down, and strategically positioned themselves.

"One. Two. Th…" Cloud began counting down.

"Why are you counting?" Aerith asked in confusion, blinking sleepily as she started to sit up.

"NOW!" screamed Reno.

Together all the boys threw their water across the girls. The reaction was instantaneous. The girls were on their feet shrieking before the boys could even take a single step. Realizing that their plan was about to backfire, the boys scattered and ran away as fast as they possibly could.

"I am going to _kill_ you, Rufus," Tifa screamed as she chased after him.

Elena targeted Tseng and began running after him, Yuffie decided to go after Reno, and Aerith glanced between Zack and Cloud before deciding to chase the latter of the two.

"You are _so_ going to pay for that, mister!" she yelled as she ran after him.

"Wait! We can talk this over!" Cloud called back desperately.

Unfortunately, turning his head to yell back resulted in him stumbling on the sand allowing Aerith to get close enough to tackle him. They tumbled to the ground together and Aerith began punching him all over.

"Okay, okay! I'm sorry!" Cloud laughed, quickly realizing from the lack of force in any of the blows that Aerith wasn't really that angry with him.

"Don't think you've gotten off easy," Aerith told him as they got up. "I promise you we'll get revenge."

In the end, everyone ended up playing together in the water for another hour until they decided they were hungry and started to head back.

"See, in the end, wasn't it a good thing we attacked you?" Reno asked. "That was so much fun once you guys stopped being so lazy."

"We're here for a week!" Tifa exclaimed. "It's not like we were going to sunbathe every day!"

"Or ever again after that," muttered Elena.

"So what's for dinner?" Rufus asked, deciding it was best to change the subject.

"Oh, that's right, I'd forgotten we had to cook tonight," Aerith replied. "I guess we'll figure it out after we've changed; it'll be a secret that way."

* * *

After the guys changed, they gathered together in the communal hall between the dorms and chatted while watching television as they waited for the girls to finish cooking.

"You know… in retrospect, with them cooking dinner tonight, that attack was a _really_ bad idea," Rude commented.

"You don't think they'd mess with the food do you?" Reno asked in horror.

"I told you we'd regret it," Zack said, shaking his head.

"What's with Sephiroth?" Cloud asked. "Is he _still_ in his room?"

"Who cares?" Vincent replied. "The less we see of him this trip, the better."

"Dinner's ready!" Yuffie called out, interrupting their conversation.

"Please let the food be safe, please the food be safe," Reno prayed under his breath as they walked to the kitchen.

Once they arrived they found the rest of the girls sitting at the table waiting for them. Two large bowls were placed at the ends of the table and a single bowl in the middle contained salad.

"Oh wow! It's chili!" Reno cried in excitement as he sat down.

"Why are there two serving bowls?" Cloud asked in suspicion.

"Because it's easier that way, silly" Aerith replied. "These are already heavy enough, passing one bowl back and forth would be a nightmare."

After each side served themselves from their respective bowl the girls began eating, but all the boys were still looking at their chili suspiciously.

"What's wrong?" Tifa asked Vincent who was sitting across from her.

"Uh nothing," he replied, taking a large spoonful of chili and eating it.

Collectively, the rest of the boys drew a deep breath as they watched Vincent chew.

"Wow, this is really good!" he exclaimed, before eagerly taking another spoonful and devouring it.

Upon hearing that, the rest of the boys decided it was safe and dug in. Just as he put the chili in his mouth, however, Cloud noticed the girls giving each other looks of surprise. He immediately realized why.

"You call this _good_?" Zack exclaimed, tears running down his face.

"I've never eaten anything this hot in my life!" cried Reno, grabbing his glass of water and chugging it down.

"Really?" asked Vincent. "It tastes just fine to me, it's the perfect degree of spiciness in my mind."

"Well, other than the heat, you do have to admit that it is really good chili," Cloud pointed out.

"Any chance we could try some of yours?" Rufus asked pleadingly.

"No way," Tifa replied, smirking. "This is your payback for earlier, eat it or starve," she finished evilly as she gave Aerith a high five.

The rest of the meal finished in relative silence as the girls enjoyed their chili, and the guys, except Vincent, suffered through theirs. Once they were finished, everyone decided to watch a movie before going to bed.

"I'm sorry we had to do that to you guys," Aerith whispered to Cloud as she curled up against him on the sofa. "We couldn't just let you get away with what you did, though."

"It's alright," Cloud assured her. "I meant what I said, other than the heat that really was amazing chili."

After a few minutes, Aerith pulled away from him. "It's a little chilly, I'm going to run to my room and grab a sweatshirt fast," she said.

"Want me to go grab mine for you instead?" Cloud asked.

"No thanks," she replied, smiling as she stood up.

"Do you want some company?" Tifa asked.

"Heh, it's not far at all, I'll be fine Tifa," she laughed.

After several minutes had passed, however, Aerith hadn't returned, Tifa got up without saying anything and headed for the girls' rooms. She returned only a minute later, bursting through the door and breathing hard.

"Aerith is gone!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's an incredibly short chapter, especially for how much time has passed since the last update, but I wanted to end on a cliffhanger. Hopefully, this chapter isn't too disappointing. I can, on the other hand, promise you that the next chapter is going to be much longer. It should be posted in around two weeks, and a lot of really important stuff is going to be happening.


	8. Upside Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4 years isn't too long to leave a story on a cliffhanger right? I imagine by this point most of the original readers have long forgotten about this story, but when I checked the stats pages recently, I was surprised at how many people still read it. It's been nagging me for a while now that I pretty much just abandoned this story, especially since it's one of my favorites. Thankfully, I still have all my notes and I remember exactly where I want to go with it. I can't promise lots of fast updates, but I do have a large amount of free time on my hands for a while and I really do hope that in the next few months I'll have this story finished. As an extra treat, this is the second-longest chapter so far in the story. I hope it was worth the wait and that the opening sucks you right back in.
> 
> Once again, thanks to my fantastic beta, Ancielle, for helping with this chapter.

Cloud looked up at Aerith, barely able to see her through the tears in his eyes. "I don't understand, what did I do?" he asked. The cold, cruel look in her eyes was breaking his heart.

"Die," she hissed as she released the Fira spell directly at him.

* * *

_Two weeks earlier_

* * *

Elena instantly paused the movie and everyone gathered around Tifa to find out what was going on.

Cloud looked at her in confusion, unwilling to believe what he'd just heard. "What do you mean she's 'gone'? Are you sure she isn't just in the bathroom or something?" Despite what he said, Cloud could read it on Tifa's face that something was seriously wrong.

"Of course I checked the bathroom, she isn't there!" Tifa explained, the note of concern clear in her voice. "I went to our room to see what was taking her so long; when I got there I found her sweatshirt on the floor and the window wide open."

Cloud struggled to keep his rising panic under control, his brain furiously trying to figure out what could have possibly happened.

Rufus wrapped his arm around Tifa's shoulders as she collapsed onto the sofa sobbing, unable to take it any longer. "It's going to be okay," he tried to reassure her. "We're going to find out exactly what happened to her."

As Elena and Yuffie replaced him in comforting Tifa, Rufus quickly took control of the situation. "Reno, Rude, go and notify the teachers immediately. Vincent, Zack, and Tseng stay here and keep an eye on the girls. Cloud and I are going to check out Aerith's room. Weapons ready everyone, we don't know what's going on yet."

After quickly grabbing their weapons from their rooms, Cloud and Rufus hurried to Tifa and Aerith's room. Just as Tifa had described it, Aerith's sweatshirt was lying on the floor and a cold breeze was blowing in through the open window.

"She was cold so she came for her sweatshirt, decided she didn't need it and went for an evening stroll?" suggested Rufus skeptically.

"In the rain? Without her staff?" Cloud pointed out, as a light drizzle had just started falling and the weapon in question was leaning against the wall. "Obviously something weird is going on here. The window opens from the inside and clearly hasn't been forced. On top of that, there's no sign of a struggle so she apparently opened it."

"She opened it for someone she recognized and they took her?" Rufus questioned. "Except everyone was watching the movie and there's no way a teacher would do that."

"Everyone except Sephiroth," Cloud growled, his hand tightening on his sword.

"Wait a minute, now, Cloud, "Rufus cautioned, "We don't know what happened and I highly doubt Aerith would just go along with Sephiroth…" But Cloud wasn't listening as he headed out the door, his mind already made up as to what had happened.

* * *

Cloud didn't even think of knocking and simply took out the door with a single swing. "Where the hell is she, you bastard?" he demanded, only realizing now that Sephiroth had been sleeping when he burst through the door.

"What the…" Sephiroth muttered sleepily as he took in the situation. As soon as he registered the sight of Cloud brandishing his sword at him, Sephiroth leaped out of bed, swiftly drawing his own sword from its sheath. "What do you think you're doing?" he asked.

"Stop playing games," Cloud demanded. "What did you do to her, Sephiroth?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Sephiroth angrily retorted. "All I know is that you've broken into my room in the middle of the night, while I was attempting to get some sleep, in the hopes of blaming me for something that's not my fault."

"Aerith's missing you bastard, and I know you're the one behind it," Cloud shouted, taking a step forward and readying his sword.

"What?" Sephiroth responded, a flicker of genuine surprise flashing across his face. "What do you mean she's missing?"

"Stop pretending you don't know what I'm talking about and…"

"ENOUGH," Cid yelled, furiously glaring at the two of them from the ruined doorway. "Go to your room, Cloud, and stay there until I come and get you."

"But…"

"No buts! You've clearly shown that your emotions are in full control and that you're not thinking. Sephiroth isn't responsible for this, which you'd know if you'd stayed with Rufus instead of storming off and acting like a child. We found her footprints, and only hers, leading off into the forest, so whatever's going on, she's doing it on her own."

Cowed, Cloud lowered his sword realizing that Cid was completely right. "I'm sorry," he apologized. "I'll pay for the door."

"You're damn right you will," Cid muttered, clearly not as angry anymore now that Cloud had somewhat calmed down. "We're going to form a search party and go out looking for her, but given the weather and the fact that it's the middle of the night, I doubt we'll find her. We'll try again in the morning if she isn't back by then, and you'll be more than welcome to join us. For now, we just have to hope she knows what she's doing since there have been no signs of foul play."

Emotionally drained, Cloud returned to his room where, to his surprise, he found Red, waiting for him. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "I thought you'd be helping with the search. I wish I could."

"It's _wet_ out there," Red stated in disgust. "And as much as I'd like to help look for Aerith, someone has to watch over you to make sure you don't do anything else stupid."

Realizing that there was nothing else he could do, Cloud got ready for bed and climbed under the sheets. Knowing that Aerith was still somewhere out there, alone and possibly in danger, Cloud was positive he'd be unable to sleep. His instincts told him that Sephiroth was clearly involved, somehow, but he just couldn't figure out how it was possible. After all, Sephiroth was either a remarkable actor or even he had been surprised to hear that Aerith had gone missing.

"Red, what do you know about Sephiroth?"

"Not much more than you," the cat responded. "He's obviously a loner. His parents are Hojo and Jenova; they're very well known Materia researchers. Bugenhagen worked with them on a project a few years ago but stopped for some reason, you'd have to ask him why."

As Cloud pondered over this new information, sleep unexpectedly snuck up and engulfed him.

* * *

Cloud abruptly woke up as two paws landed on his chest.

"You were sleeping so deeply you didn't hear Cid yelling from the other side of the door and I figured you wouldn't want the search party to leave without you," Red explained as he dropped back onto the floor.

"Thanks, Red," Cloud said as he jumped out of bed and scrambled to get dressed. "So, she's still missing?"

Red nodded in confirmation. "All the search party managed to accomplish last night was getting wet and muddy. By the time they set out, the rain had completely destroyed any trace of her tracks so all we know is that she's somewhere in the forest."

Once dressed, Cloud strapped his sword to his back and hurried outside to join everyone.

"Hey sleepyhead, glad you could join us," Tifa teased. "I heard that the explosion last night was you and not a Comet Materia."

Cloud flushed slightly in embarrassment at the reminder of how out of control he'd been the previous night. He could tell that despite Tifa's attempt to come off as light-hearted, she was deathly afraid for her best friend. "I swear to you I'll find her, Tifa."

Tifa smiled weakly but didn't respond. Sensing it would be best to leave her alone for now, Cloud walked over to Vincent. "What's _he_ doing here?" Cloud asked, nodding in the direction of Sephiroth.

"Not sure," Vincent responded. "He was here before any of us. Maybe he thinks that if he finds her she'll fall into his arms and cover him in kisses."

"Not likely," Cloud muttered angrily. Vincent nodded in agreement as Cid and Reeve joined the students.

"As all of you already know, Aerith Gainsborough mysteriously went missing last night," Cid announced. "We're going to divide into two parties and scour the forest for any signs of her. Keep in mind that while the beach is a safe vacation area, the forest is still wild and there _will_ be monsters waiting for us in there. The deeper we get, the more dangerous it becomes. On top of that, we only have so much time to search - the last thing we want is to be stuck in the forest at night. We don't want to lose another student."

"She's not dead!" Tifa hissed angrily, clenching her fists.

Cid quickly separated the students into two groups: Sephiroth, Zack, Tseng, Elena, Reno, and Rude were with Reeve, and Cloud, Tifa, Vincent, Rufus, Yuffie, and Red were with Cid.

As his group reached the tree line, Cid explained the plan. "We're going to spread out to cover as much ground as possible. Make sure to keep the people on your left and right in sight at all times, Red and I will each take an end. If you run into a monster and have any doubts whatsoever make sure to call for help. Any questions?"

When no one spoke up, the group entered the forest and began the search. What had started as a hopeful expedition grew moodier and moodier as the hours passed with no sign of Aerith. By mid-day, they had slowed to a crawl due to the increased rate of monster attacks, and Cloud had replaced Red on one of the ends since he was the only student still able to take monsters on alone. After the latest battle, in which it had taken every one to survive, Cid called a meeting.

"As much as I know no one wants to turn around, we simply can't continue on. It's getting far too dangerous, and if the group of us is struggling this much, there's no way Aerith could have made it this far on her own. Let's shift over and take a different way back to continue looking for her."

Despite how upset everyone was about turning around, no one could disagree with what Cid had said. No one but Cloud, that is. For some reason he couldn't explain, he felt sure that Aerith was just a bit deeper in the forest. As they turned around, Cloud glanced to his right and saw Yuffie stumbling along, struggling just to keep moving. As the only Junior in the group and the least experienced in combat, she'd been hit the hardest by the constant fighting. Cloud didn't want to endanger Yuffie by making her the end of the search line, but he knew he had to go deeper into the forest, even if it meant going alone. There was no way he was going to leave Aerith to spend another night lost and alone in the forest.

Knowing that they'd move Yuffie off the end as soon as they discovered him missing and that they'd already wiped out the majority of the monsters on the way back to the beach, Cloud broke off from the group after he saw Yuffie confirm his position.

After another hour of continuing on deeper into the forest without any trace of Aerith, Cloud began to question if he'd made the right decision. It was already starting to get dark and at this rate, he'd barely make it back to the beach before the sun would set. Just as he was about to give up and turn around, he caught a glimpse of pink in the corner of his vision. Rushing over, he found a torn tatter of what could only be a piece of Aerith's shirt.

Elated, Cloud looked around for more traces of where she could have gone. After finding another two pieces of torn clothing, he arrived at a clearing and found Aerith lying on her back in the middle of it. She was covered in mud, her clothes were a shredded mess and she didn't appear to be breathing.

Cloud ran over and quickly checked her pulse. She was still alive to his relief, but barely. He reached into his pack and pulled out a Cure Materia, hoping that it would be enough, and cursing his weak magic abilities. Concentrating furiously, he managed to cast the Cure spell on his first attempt. Cradling her head in his lap, Cloud prayed to the Ancients that she was okay. After a few moments, her eyelids flickered and then opened, and he could see her beautiful green eyes looking up at him.

"Cloud," she said happily, "what are you doing in my room? Did Tifa let you in?"

Before he could respond, Aerith finished coming to and realized she wasn't in her bedroom.

"What are we doing in the forest, Cloud?" she asked, her voice full of panic.

"You don't remember what happened?" Cloud responded, deeply concerned.

Aerith shook her head. "The last thing I remember is going to my room and grabbing my sweatshirt… What's going on Cloud?"

"I don't know," Cloud said in frustration. "But I promise you we'll figure it out. We need to get back now, it's getting late and we have a long way to go. Can you walk?"

"I think so," Aerith replied, slowly getting to her feet while taking in the state of her clothes. As she put her full weight on her right foot, she cried out in pain and would have collapsed if Cloud hadn't caught her. "I think I sprained my ankle."

"I'll carry you back, it's not a problem," Cloud said, lifting her in his arms.

"Thanks for saving me, Cloud," Aerith said softly. "I wish you didn't have to see me this ugly."

"I'm just glad you're safe," Cloud responded in relief as he began walking back towards the beach. "I was terrified I'd lost you."

"You'll never… lose me," Aerith whispered, yawning loudly. "I…" But whatever she was going to say next was lost as exhaustion claimed her.

Digging deep into his dwindling reserves of strength, Cloud pressed on, praying that he had enough to get them both back safely.

* * *

' _Run!'_

_The voice flashed into her mind out of nowhere and was gone just as fast._

_She held her sweatshirt in her arms, wondering what had just happened._

A bedroom.

_She recognized that voice. After all, she heard that voice every day. It was her own voice._

" _Hello?" she asked tentatively, aware that generally talking with oneself inside your own head was a very bad sign._

_There was no response._

_Or was there? It was very faint, but she heard something._

The bedroom in Elena's house.

" _Youuuuu…"_

 _It was very faint. More alarmingly, that was_ _**not** _ _her voice._

" _What's going on?" she asked in a panic._

" _ **HE**_ _is coming!"_

A closed window.

" _Who? What?" She was so confused. What was going on?_

" _RUN!"_

_She dropped her sweatshirt on the floor, opened her window, and ran, ignoring her bare feet._

An open window.

" _Youuuu aaareeee…"_

_It was still faint but getting louder and clearer._

" _I am what?" she asked. Part of her didn't want to know._

_She was at the edge of the forest now. She glanced behind her._

A shrouded figure.

_There was no one there. She started to slow down._

" _What am I doing? Everyone is going to be so worried."_

" _ **RUN!**_ _"_

_The moon, shining in each raindrop, lit her path through the trees._

A red glow.

_She had been running forever. Her clothes were torn. Muddy._

_Exhausted, she stumbled._

_She cried out at the sudden pain in her ankle._

A flash of pain in her head.

_She lay there, the rain mixing with her tears._

_She hadn't heard either voice in hours._

_Had she run far enough? Fast enough? Was she safe?_

" _Cloud…" she whispered._

" _You are_ _ **MINE!**_ _"_

Nothingness.

* * *

By the time Cloud made it back to the condos, it was pitch black outside. He managed to knock on the door and pass off Aerith to Tifa before collapsing on the floor, unconscious.

* * *

The rest of the trip was subdued.

Cloud was unconscious for two days with Aerith spending the entire time at his bedside. Once he woke up, she refused to go anywhere without him, which led to problems with Cid when she refused to sleep in a separate room.

"It's not like they haven't already slept together at Elena's house!" Reno joked, causing Cid to frown disapprovingly.

Aerith's face flashed from deathly white to bright red. "We didn't sleep together!" she protested. "Nothing… happened that night. Cid, I'll sleep in my own bed, just, please, let me stay with Cloud."

Unable to refuse her knowing what she'd gone through, Cid agreed, but insisted that Red stay in the same room "for added protection." Everyone knew that what he really meant was "so that nothing inappropriate happens."

For the next two nights, Cloud would wake up to Aerith muttering something unintelligible in her sleep just before she would scream, "I am myself!" She would then shake uncontrollably until he crawled out of his bed and into hers to wrap his arms around her. Red noticed, but pretended he didn't and said nothing to Cid about it.

Each morning, when Cloud would ask her about her nightmares, Aerith refused to talk with him about it, saying that she was fine and it was nothing to worry about. On the third night, she slept soundly, and while Cloud missed the excuse to cuddle her, he hoped that it was a sign she was recovering from whatever had happened.

That day, as they packed their stuff and prepared to head back to school, Aerith was back to her usual cheerful and happy self. For the first time in the last few days, she spent the majority of her time outside of Cloud's company, and the moodiness that had settled over everyone lifted.

* * *

Monday morning, classes passed as usual, although, before lunch, Barret had the Senior class meet him in the auditorium for an important announcement.

"Welcome back everyone!" Barret boomed. "I hope you had as enjoyable a vacation as possible given the uh, unusual… circumstances." He trailed off. "Nevertheless, it's back to school and as an added treat, we have your first real test coming up in just a week!"

This announcement was met by a loud groan and several profanities from the class.

"Well you better fucking deal with it, 'cause you're back in school now whether you like it or not," he roared, getting back in the usual swing of things. "Besides, just think of how fun a _real_ test will be now that you've gotten a taste of the new system." He finished with a smile so sinister it sent a shiver down Cloud's spine.

"We're all going to die," Vincent observed calmly as they entered the cafeteria, his tone causing Tifa to break out laughing.

As they joined Yuffie at her table, Tifa noticed that her friend looked somewhat down. "What's up, Yuffie?"

"I got detention for an entire week!" the younger girl moaned in despair.

"Oh, _wow_! How'd you manage to do _that?_ " Cloud asked in horror.

"Apparently when they say 'Senior class trip' it means that only Seniors are allowed to go."

"Now that you mention it how _did_ you get on our trip?" Vincent asked.

"I hid under a seat on the bus, of course," Yuffie explained as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "When Cid found me on the beach, he _flipped_ out. Said he was going to throw me right back on the ferry, but when I pointed out that I had no money and he'd have to pay my fare, he decided to let me stay."

The entire table laughed at that and the conversation changed to the upcoming test.

The rest of the week passed in a flurry of activity, as the students were crammed full of information. The normal three days of classes a week was changed to five due to the test, meaning there were no days off. By the time the weekend arrived, all Cloud wanted to do was sleep for two days straight, but they hadn't been able to practice together much during the week, so, instead, he spent most of the time working together with Aerith in the park. Not that he was going to complain about that.

* * *

Monday morning, the day of the test, rolled around and Cloud couldn't decide if he was excited or worried as he parked his bike. On one hand, he and Aerith had done pretty well on the practice test, but on the other, this was an actual test and would likely be far more challenging. On top of that, some unshakable feeling of dread wouldn't leave him alone no matter how much he tried to shrug it off.

As the class filed into the gym for their test, they found Barret, their teachers, and the strange desks waiting for them.

"This will be just like last time," Barret announced, "just much longer. Remember that you're scored on both accuracy and speed. Since the questions will be more challenging this time, if you're unable to answer either question at a fork, you do have an option to skip the question. Just keep in mind that it will result in a drastic reduction of your grade and should only be used as a last resort. And, of course, the same rules as before are still in effect."

Cloud thought he might be mistaken, but it felt like that last comment had been directed at Sephiroth.

As they sat at their desk, Cloud smiled confidently at Aerith. "We've got this." She nodded at him and they placed their hands on the Materia.

Just like last time, a wave of darkness engulfed them.

* * *

Cloud helped Aerith to her feet as they came to in the familiar torch-lit room. As they waited for the test to begin, each of them checked the weapons and Materia they had been provided with. To his surprise, Cloud found that he'd only been provided with his weapon.

"Did you get any Materia?" he asked.

"Quite a bit," Aerith responded, slightly confused. "Some of these we haven't even covered in class and they're pretty powerful…"

' _I guess it's just part of their system to make sure we work together,'_ Cloud thought.

Once again, a door appeared on the wall opposite the torch, and the two of them hurried down the corridor on the other side until they reached a fork.

"Right again? Just like last time?" asked Cloud cheerfully.

Aerith shrugged noncommittally, so Cloud led the way down the right fork. After a short jog, they reached one of the testing rooms and found a table with a piece of paper on it.

"What tragic event happened last year at Junon High resulting in the expulsion of a student?" it read.

Cloud's face paled as he read the question.

"That's an oddly specific History question," Aerith remarked. "And once again, one we haven't covered in class."

"How about we check out the other fork?" Cloud suggested, attempting to conceal his emotions.

"That would be such a waste of time!" Aerith protested. "Besides, wasn't that your old school? Don't you know what happened?"

"I… know what happened…" Cloud responded hesitantly. "I don't really want to talk about it though, can't we please just do the other question?"

"Why would we waste time if you know the answer? Just give it, Cloud!"

"Fine!" Cloud yelled back. "A student was murdered with a sword, butchered like an animal right on campus!"

Aerith's face had gone as white as a sheet and she started trembling uncontrollably. Cloud saw her lips move and couldn't understand what she said, but it sounded like "I am myself" which didn't make any sense.

"Aerith, it wasn't me!" Cloud declared, but she continued to look at him in horror, her body still trembling and her lips still moving over and over. "I swear I didn't do it, I wasn't even accused! He was my friend! I wasn't expelled, my parents took me out because they didn't want me at a school where something like that could happen!"

But now, looking back, Cloud realized how bad it really looked. The experience had already been traumatic enough, but had he really been blamed for it? Everything he'd said to Aerith had been the truth as far as he was aware, but had his parents lied to him? Were they trying to protect him by telling him that they'd pulled him out of the school when in fact he'd been expelled?

Banishing these horrible thoughts to be dealt with later, Cloud realized that Aerith seemed to have calmed down. He reached over to attempt to comfort her, but she flinched away from him.

"What the fuck is up with this test?" he yelled at the ceiling in frustration.

Not surprisingly there was no response. Cloud didn't even know if the teachers could hear them. His response to the question had materialized the door, however, so Cloud opened it to reveal another hallway. Together, they walked down it in silence, once again taking the right fork when they reached it.

The next testing room was much larger and more open, with multiple pillars in the middle. As they entered, several powerful monsters appeared and Cloud sighed in relief. Letting off some steam was exactly what he needed.

Taking a firm grip on his sword, Cloud sliced through the monsters like a hot knife through butter, hardly breaking a sweat. "You know, just because I don't need help doesn't mean it wouldn't be appreciated," he joked, trying to lighten the mood as he turned around to face Aerith.

He froze when he saw Aerith standing there, her hair blowing gently in a non-existent wind, a Materia he didn't recognize glowing bright green in her hand. Her face was terrifying. The usual warmth in her eyes had been replaced by… nothingness. "Aerith?" Cloud asked hesitantly.

The shift in her eyes from nothingness to pure hatred was actually a relief as the blast of solid air smashed into Cloud's chest, sending him flying backwards to crash into one of the pillars. Cloud felt something break in his chest and would have screamed in pain, but the air had been knocked from his lungs.

"You sicken me. I can't believe I let your filthy hands touch me," Aerith snarled as she put the Materia away and took out a different one.

Cloud looked up at Aerith, barely able to see her through the tears in his eyes. "I don't understand, what did I do?" he asked, finally managing to draw a breath. The cold, cruel look in her eyes hurt far more than any physical pain ever could.

"Die," she hissed as she released the Fira spell directly at him.

As he was engulfed in warm, white light, Cloud's final thought was that this was a surprisingly painless death.

* * *

Cloud woke up in a white room, on a white bed, surrounded by white curtains. The only color other than white in the entire room was Red, who was curled up on the floor beside him. He recognized the room as the school's hospital from a previous visit after an accident in training.

"I'm not dead?" Cloud asked, realizing how stupid the question sounded as he said it.

"Not yet," Red confirmed, uncurling and looking up at Cloud. "Bugenhagen managed to pull you out of the test just before your loving girlfriend would have turned you into an ember."

"How's she doing?"

"Other than being remarkably unstable, she seems to be doing quite well," Red responded dryly. "Then again, what with you breaking that news on her like that and then proceeding to chop up several monsters into tiny little pieces, can you really blame her for freaking out?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Nanaki," Bugenhagen scolded. "While a shocked and alarmed reaction would indeed be perfectly natural, there's no question that Miss Gainsborough's reaction was far too extreme. Something is seriously wrong. I only wish I'd been allowed to examine her before her mother rushed her off."

"I guess we failed our first test then…" Cloud muttered.

"Nonsense," Bugenhagen responded. "The entire test was canceled, we should have done it immediately when we realized your first question had been tampered with. Barret insisted that it didn't matter since only yours seemed to have been modified, but it was quite clear that something had gone seriously wrong. I designed each and every question and it should have been impossible for there to be any changes."

"I don't hurt anywhere, how long have I been out for?" Cloud asked.

"Your broken ribs and second-degree burns have healed nicely, and it's Friday, so you still have the weekend to continue recovering before classes resume."

' _I've been out for four days…'_ Cloud realized. _'Aerith really did quite a number on me. What the hell is going on?'_

The rest of the day passed in a blur as several visitors stopped by to check on him once they heard that he'd woken up. Tifa was noticeably absent, but Vincent explained that she was with Aerith and couldn't make it.

Cloud's parents picked him up in the evening and drove him home, explaining that they'd already brought his bike back earlier. When he asked them about the expulsion, they admitted that they'd lied to him, but made it clear that they knew he hadn't killed the boy.

Over the weekend he tried to call Aerith several times, but she never answered her phone. Deciding it would be best not to force the issue and to give her some space, Cloud refrained from driving to her house. In the end, he spent the weekend thinking over the strange things that had been happening with Aerith. Whatever was going on, he was pretty sure that, somehow, Sephiroth was involved. Remembering his conversation with Red about Sephiroth's parents, Cloud realized he'd missed his chance to speak with Bugenhagen about the matter. In any case, nothing was going to happen until Monday.

* * *

As Cloud drove into the school's parking lot on Fenrir, he heard a loud commotion outside the front doors. Quickly parking, he rushed over to see what was going on. As he approached he saw Tifa, Vincent, Rufus, Reno, and Rude yelling at Sephiroth. Surprisingly, Cloud noticed that there was a girl clutching Sephiroth's arm, looking up at him adoringly. Cloud didn't recognize her, but he wasn't surprised that Sephiroth's girlfriend would dress like such a slut - what she was wearing would barely pass the school's dress code and it was already pretty generous.

Cloud came to an abrupt halt in horror as he got close enough to see the girl's eyes. He would recognize those emerald green eyes anywhere.

It was Aerith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, yes, I know. ANOTHER cliffhanger. On top of that opening scene, I realize I'm being a little cruel to you, my poor readers. I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I did writing it; I think you can see now why I felt so bad leaving the story just as the action was about to kick in. It was really so amazing to get back into writing. I enjoy it so much, and it's such an awesome experience to feel like you know where the story is going only to have a random idea pop into your head that you then have to include. The dream sequence Aerith has after Cloud finds her in the forest is a perfect example of this. It wasn't planned at all, but now it's a ridiculously important scene that ties plot points together as well as a taste of what's to come. And yes, poor Yuffie's detention is the result of me having no idea why I included her on that trip in the first place.
> 
> Side-note: Just to clarify, I detest the Sephiroth/Aerith pairing. Unfortunately, it is obviously going to play a role in the remainder of the story. This is still a Clerith fic, and as painful as the... Sephirith is going to be to write, I hope it won't drive anyone away from the story.
> 
> I can't make any promises as to when the next chapter will be out, but I do have it all planned out and it's going to be fairly short, so hopefully, it won't take another 4 years... As always, please leave a review letting me know what you think of the story, I really appreciate it.


	9. Cloudy Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well… I bet you never saw this coming. I know I certainly didn't, and boy did that last endnote, not age well. Your first thought upon seeing this update might have been "Oh wow, only 8 years this time!" BUT! Believe it or not, this story is now complete! That's right, if you're reading this lame author's note, then that means I've actually finished the rest of the chapters for this story. I decided that if I was ever going to work on it again, I'd just get it all done before posting any new chapters. No, I haven't been working on it for the last eight years; I picked it up again because I was surprised at how many notifications I was getting on a seemingly dead, thirteen-year-old story. Of course, I realize that's because the amazingness that is FF7 Remake came out and pulled even more people into the fandom, but it's also been killing me that I've left this unfinished. The story also got its first review in five years, so never underestimate the power of telling an author you like their work. But enough of that, you're not here for this overly long author's note; you're here for the story. I hope it was worth the wait, enjoy.

Cloud staggered backward at the realization, his brain refusing to acknowledge what his eyes were seeing. Aerith would never dress like that, much less drape herself over anyone, especially not Sephiroth. But no matter how much he wanted to deny it, no matter how much it made his heart twist within his chest, as Cloud took a few shaky steps towards her, he could no longer deny what he was seeing. The girl standing there in the frilly pink crop top and the short white mini skirt was, without a doubt, Aerith.

"What did you do to her, you bastard?" Cloud snarled at Sephiroth, his hand instinctively reaching for the Buster Sword on his back.

Sephiroth just smirked back at him, and it was actually Aerith herself who responded to Cloud's question. "Do to me? Why does Sephiroth have to have done something to me? Am I incapable of choosing who I want to be with? You men are all the same, now you sound just like Zack did a few months ago. If anything, Cloud," she snarled angrily, " _you're_ the one who did something. The fact that you think I'd still want to associate with a murderer like you _sickens_ me."

Cloud felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. Not just from what Aerith had said, but also the voice she'd used; he'd never heard her be so completely and utterly disdainful before. Unable to respond, Cloud just watched as Sephiroth and Aerith turned to enter the school, leaving everyone else standing on the school steps in shock.

"So uh… that just happened," Reno finally said, attempting to break the awkward silence.

Rude only grunted in response.

"Any idea what's going on, Tif?" Rufus asked softly, glancing over at her.

Tifa was still standing there, staring at where Aerith had been, a hand covering her mouth in shock. At Rufus' question, she came back to herself and shook her head slowly. "I… I have no idea what's going on with her. We were together just yesterday and she…" Tifa let out a soft sob, unable to keep her tears back now. "She seemed just fine to me, she said that she felt a lot better, that she'd gotten over what had happened and she was looking forward to classes on Monday…" She sniffed strongly, and furiously brushed the tears from her eyes. "Cloud's right, that asshole has to have done something to her and I swear I'm going to make him pay for it." The five men standing around her all recoiled simultaneously from the tangible wrath emanating from Tifa at this statement.

Before anyone else could chime in, the school bell rang indicating that they were all late to their morning class. They quickly hurried inside and rushed to their classroom, earning a disappointing look from Reeve, but he continued on with his lecture instead of calling them out. As Cloud took his seat, he couldn't help but notice that Sephiroth and Aerith had pushed their desks together in the back of the room and were clearly paying far more attention to each other than to the lecture. He ground his teeth in anger and forced himself to focus on what Reeve was saying, doing his best to ignore the continued giggles and whispers.

"If you two have no interest in learning the lore of the Ancients, you're more than welcome to continue your little conversation in Barret's office," Reeve eventually snapped, no longer willing to tolerate the distraction in the back of the room.

In response, Aerith just rolled her eyes at him, but she did scoot her desk away from Sephiroth's and at least pretended like she was paying attention. Cloud could see how tightly Tifa's fists were clenched and knew that this horrible situation was hurting her just as much as him.

Eventually, the lunch bell rang, and all of the students filed out of the classroom and headed for the cafeteria. Cloud felt like he was in a nightmare, some part of him had held out hope that this was all some big joke, but the day was already half over and Aerith was still at Sephiroth's side. Even now, they were moving past Cloud in the lunch line, having already gotten their meals. Aerith ignored him as they passed, but Sephiroth stopped and leaned down slightly.

"I bet you never truly learned just how good she really tastes," he whispered into Cloud's ear.

Cloud saw red. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground over Sephiroth, his fists covered in blood and his arms restrained by someone behind him he couldn't see. He could hear dozens of voices all screaming, but couldn't make out whatever it was they were saying. The last thing he saw before blacking out was the twisted, smug smirk on Sephiroth's bloody face.

* * *

Cloud came to once more in the now-familiar hospital room, rapidly blinking his eyes as his pupils slowly adjusted to the bright light.

"Well that was really fucking stupid, now wasn't it?" Barret remarked from the stool next to Cloud's bed.

"He said…" Cloud began angrily, shaking his head to help clear it.

"I don't give a shit what he said!" Barret snapped. "You _assaulted_ a fellow student on campus. You do understand what the consequences of that are, right?"

"I…" Cloud bit his lip in frustration and looked down, realizing that there was nothing he could really say. He knew he'd screwed up, that he shouldn't have lost control like that, but at the same time, he wasn't sorry that he had. "I'm expelled then?" he muttered angrily, unable to meet Barret's eyes and the disappointment he knew he'd see there.

There was a long moment of silence before Barret finally responded. "No," he said, surprisingly softly. "I was able to prevent it from going that far, although Sephiroth's parents certainly tried their hardest to force my hand. Everyone there saw him provoke you and vouched for you, even, surprisingly enough, your old girlfriend."

"Aerith did?" Cloud asked in confusion, his head jerking up to look at Barret.

Barret nodded slowly. "Look, Cloud," he said, placing his huge hand firmly on Cloud's shoulder and looking him directly in the eye. "We're not stupid. Every teacher in this school has known Aerith for almost four years now. We know this isn't like her. But we also have no proof, evidence, or explanation for what the fuck is going on. So until she gives some indication of needing help, our hands are tied. We can't just impose our will on our students, that's not what we do here."

"I understand," Cloud muttered unhappily. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for the scene I caused in the cafeteria, and thanks for not expelling me."

"Now, now, don't think you get off quite _that_ easily," Barret replied, his voice getting stern once again. "You're not expelled, but you _are_ suspended for the rest of the year, there has to be consequences for your actions." He quickly raised a hand to stall Cloud's response before continuing. "I did manage to get permission for you to still attend the winter dance at the end of the week, but only under the condition that you don't go anywhere near Sephiroth, you understand me?

Cloud nodded slowly, indicating he understood. "Thanks for that…"

"Now, I have to get back to my office and make sure Marlene finished all of her vegetables. That girl just hates to eat her broccoli," Barret said, standing up from the stool causing it to creak loudly.

"I don't blame her," Cloud replied, a small smile at the corner of his mouth. "Broccoli is disgusting."

Barret just laughed and punched him softly on the shoulder. "Don't you get out of that bed just yet, Bugenhagen said he wanted to check on you before you head home." And with that, he walked out of the room, giving Cloud a farewell wave as he closed the door.

Cloud didn't have to wait long until Bugenhagen came bustling into the room, Red close on his heels, and settled down onto the stool Barret had just vacated. The old man didn't say anything as he began to inspect Cloud's hands, and Cloud was more than happy to sit in silence.

Once he finished his brief checkup, Bugenhagen leaned back slightly and let out a deep breath. "Well now, I imagine Barret already gave you a lecture about your behavior so I'll leave that alone. I do have a few questions for you about Miss Gainsborough's recent behavior, however."

"I've actually got some questions for you as well, about your work with Sephiroth's parents," Cloud responded, thinking back to the conversation he'd had with Red, back at the beach.

Bugenhagen glared over at Nanaki upon hearing this, but Red appeared to be far too busy watching his tail flick back and forth to notice. The old man let out a small harrumph before turning back to Cloud. "I don't know what exactly Nanaki told you, but yes, I did work with them both briefly in the past. Quite briefly, in fact, as they were both fired shortly after we started working together. Their interests in Materia were unsettling, to say the least, they seemed obsessed with pushing their research in directions better left alone."

"When you say unsettling, do you mean something like… changing a person's feelings?" Cloud asked.

Bugenhagen thought for a moment before responding slowly, "There are certainly ways of causing confusion in people, but that's very short-lasting. As far as I'm aware, there's no Materia that would explain the way Miss Gainsborough has been acting. That's not to say that it's impossible though," he mused. "But please, tell me about your interactions with her over the last week, perhaps something you've noticed will help me figure out what's happened with her."

Cloud answered the rest of Bugenhagen's questions, but he was only barely paying attention. His focus was on what he'd learned about Sephiroth's parents. He knew Bugenhagen had been skeptical, but Cloud was positive that their research had to be involved somehow.

* * *

The next three days passed in a blur, Cloud spent most of his time either moping in his room or practicing with his sword. Thursday after class, the night before the dance, the rest of the guys dragged him out to all get fitted for their tuxedos, but Cloud was in no mood to join their banter about what the girls might be wearing.

Before he was aware of it, Friday had arrived, and he found himself being ushered into the school's gym by Zach and Vincent. The room had been turned into a massive ballroom, with tables around the edges to eat at, and a massive open area in the middle for dancing. Cloud did an initial sweep of the people already there, instinctively looking for Aerith, but she was nowhere in sight. Since there was nothing else to do, Cloud went over to one of the tables at the far end to claim it for his friends.

Right as Cloud reached the table, the entire room went dead silent, immediately catching his attention and causing him to snap his head to the entrance to see what had happened. As he'd suspected, Sephiroth and Aerith had arrived, but he immediately dismissed the man at her side. It felt like time had stopped. Aerith was wearing the most stunning red dress he had ever seen. It was strapless, showing off a generous portion of her cleavage, and framing a small golden necklace. The left side had a slit from the lower thigh down, allowing for easy movement, but also giving a tantalizing look at her long leg as she moved. Her lipstick was the same shade of red as her dress, fully emphasizing her lips.

Cloud was snapped back to reality as he felt an elbow jab him in the stomach. "Well, I bet neither of us ever imagined this scenario, huh?" Zack asked, attempting to lighten the mood. Cloud just grunted in response and turned away, unable to keep looking at Aerith despite how much he wanted to. He wondered what he was even doing there if it hadn't been a mistake to come stag in the first place.

Not having anyone to dance with, and certainly not in the mood to dance in the first place, Cloud wandered over to the bar and grabbed a cup of water. In reality, he wanted nothing more than a strong drink, but obviously, at a school-sponsored event, there was none of that around.

After a few dances, Tifa broke away from Rufus and joined Cloud at the edge of the room. She was wearing a dark purple dress that stopped surprisingly short, just above the middle of her thigh, with a black ribbon tied around her neck. "Try to cheer up Cloud," she said with a cheerful tone that Cloud could tell was being forced. "I know that if Aerith were actually here she'd hate to see you like this. I… I know it's hard, and it's killing me on the inside too, but we have to be strong for her. I know we can fix this."

Cloud sighed in frustration but felt the invisible hand clenching his chest loosen slightly at Tifa's words. He knew she was right, and he silently rebuked himself for the way he'd behaved earlier in the week. He could have spent the last few days looking into figuring out what was going on, but instead, he'd acted like a spoiled child and locked himself away. Resolving to spend the rest of his time away from school looking into what was going on, Cloud gave Tifa a warm smile and nodded firmly. She smiled back at him before walking back to Rufus to continue dancing.

As Cloud watched her go, his attention was drawn to the sight of Sephiroth and Aerith swirling across the dance floor. It seemed like most of the room was watching them, in fact, as Cloud saw he wasn't the only one staring. As much as he hated to admit it, as much as he wished it was his arms around her waist and hers around his neck, the two of them did make a striking appearance on the dance floor.

As the final notes of the song came to a close, Cloud watched with a sickening sensation filling his gut as Sephiroth leaned down and moved to kiss Aerith's lips. At the last moment, however, her neck seemed to suddenly spasm, causing her head to jerk to the side, and Sephiroth's lips met her cheek instead. His eyes seemed to narrow slightly, and, completely disregarding the warning Barret had given him, Cloud quickly walked over and placed his hand on Sephiroth's chest, gently, but forcefully, shoving him away from Aerith. "She doesn't want your attention asshole," he snapped.

Before Cloud could realize what had happened, he felt a stinging impact on his check and found himself knocked backward onto his ass. He looked up to find Aerith standing over him. "A-Aerith?" he asked in surprise, putting a hand to his stinging cheek.

The cold green eyes glaring down at him weren't the ones he'd fallen in love with though. "Stop acting like you know what's best for me, Cloud!" she snapped angrily.

"Security!" Sephiroth shouted, before looking down with a smirk, and Cloud abruptly found himself being lifted off the ground and dragged out of the room by two men.

As he stared back at Aerith, still in shock that she'd slapped him so hard, Cloud noticed something very strange. Despite her being the one who'd hit him, two small trails of blood were coming out of her nose, and a lone tear was making a slow path down her cheek.

* * *

The puppet stood in the corner. The three others in the room ignored it. It was, after all, only a puppet, and not worthy of attention.

"I still feel you're being far too brazen with this," a female voice said coldly. "You risk everything."

"I agree," an older man's voice joined in. "You acted far too quickly, you never told us you were planning to activate it so soon."

"I wasn't!" a younger male voice protested. "Yes, I cast the initial spell earlier than anticipated, but it was the perfect opportunity with more than enough time while the fool slept outside her door."

"Yes, yes, that's fine," the woman said soothingly. "We agree you placed the binding at an opportune time, the issue we have is that you _activated_ it too soon afterward. We warned you that the effects would be more unstable if you didn't wait the required amount of time, that's why you're even experiencing any resistance at all."

"Yes, well you _failed_ to mention that the binding would activate immediately whenever she heard the key phrase," the younger voice snapped angrily

"Enough," the older man said. "We've already heard your excuse. It's unfortunate she happened to pass within earshot of you while you were on the phone with your mother, but that's the situation we're forced to deal with. I'm more interested in learning how the results of the spell are progressing."

"She resisted me again when I tried to kiss her," the younger voice snarled. "But it was brief, immediately afterward, she turned and slapped that idiot so hard I almost lost it."

"Its resistance will be most strong the more you attempt to force it to do things it would never consider on its own," the woman replied in a manner that indicated she'd said this many times before. "My latest estimations place your full control around the start of the new year."

_The voices slowly faded into white noise. She watched from inside her own body, trapped, unable to express her true thoughts outside of those few moments that were slowly growing ever further apart. This impostor almost had complete control. It took so much effort now to even exert any semblance of her own will and she was so, so, tired…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do have to admit, it felt SO good to write again. Hopefully, all the pieces are starting to come together and you're getting a better picture of what's going on. You may now be wondering where the next chapter is if this story is supposedly complete. The answer to that is that I'll be posting it one week after this chapter has gone up. Why? I guess mostly just to more closely mirror a regular release cadence. If you're an old-time reader coming back to hear the end of the story, or a new person just jumping in, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
> 
> P.S. Broccoli is disgusting.


	10. Investigation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter's note was getting too long, but I do want to acknowledge that my writing style has changed a lot since this story originally started, probably not too much of a surprise given how long it has been. You'll note there are no more first-person thoughts for one. I've also actually gone back and done small touchups to all of the earlier chapters, in an effort to make the story fit together slightly better. Original readers don't need to worry, however, none of the changes impact the plot whatsoever. The largest change was actually going back and fixing Shera's name since I'd originally called her Shura for some reason. Now, on to the second to last chapter!

Cloud was frustrated. Just over a week had passed since the winter dance, and he felt like he was still no closer to figuring out what had happened with Aerith. Added on top of that, Christmas had just passed, and while it had been great to hang out with all of his friends, Aerith's absence had really dampened the mood of the party. It was now the final week of the year, and Cloud hoped to be able to resolve the situation in time for Aerith to be able to join the New Year's party that Elena was already preparing for.

Fortunately, Cloud did have one last lead to investigate. At the Christmas party, the conversation had shifted to the spike in violent crimes around the city, and it had reminded Cloud of the conversation he and Aerith had overheard between Cid and his wife all those weeks ago. As Cloud parked Fenrir in the lot outside of Shera's station, he gave a short prayer to the Ancients to aid him in his investigation.

After entering the building, Cloud made his way over to the reception desk and greeted the man sitting there. "Hello sir, sorry to bother you, but is Shera on duty today? I was hoping to speak with her if possible."

The man seemed initially surprised, but gave a small shrug before pointing out a door farther down the nearby hallway. "That's her office right there, but she's going to kick your ass if you walk in there and she doesn't know who you are."

Cloud nodded his thanks, before walking over and lightly knocking on the door. "Come in!" a voice he recognized called out. "Oh, you're one of Cid's students aren't you?" she remarked as Cloud entered the room. "Cloud, right? Please, take a seat, how can I help you?"

Cloud couldn't help but raise his eyebrows in shock. "I'm surprised you remember my name since we'd only met briefly once before," he replied, taking the offered seat.

"It's just part of the job," she responded with a twinkle in her eye. "Now, what can I do for you?"

"I was hoping to ask you about the recent spike in crime that you'd come to school to talk with Cid about," Cloud said, getting straight to the point and looking her directly in the eye.

Shera sat for a moment in silence, before slowly responding in a very serious voice, her earlier brevity completely gone. "I… see. May I ask why you're so interested, first?"

"Oh, it's just for an article in the school paper. It's been all over the nightly news so we thought it would be good to do our own research on it," Cloud smoothly lied.

This was the moment of truth; if Cid had told her about Cloud's suspension, then his white lie would immediately be revealed. As Shera sat there thinking about what he'd said, however, Cloud gave a small, internal, sigh of relief that her initial concern appeared to be fading.

"I suppose that should be okay, I'll have to quickly double-check with my superiors, of course, but I can't see any harm in an interview for a school paper," Shera eventually responded. "I obviously can't go into any of the details of our investigation, but we can likely go over the high-level elements. Please wait here, I'll be right back."

As Cloud waited for Shera to return, he couldn't help but feel guilty for lying to her, even though it was for a good cause. He'd thought about how to handle this ever since the idea had first come to him at the party, and every other option he'd been able to come up with had resulted in him just coming off as a crazy ex-boyfriend. Although, in retrospect, he couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't actually a slightly accurate description.

He was interrupted from his thoughts as Shera returned, closing the door behind her before sinking back down into her chair with a deep sigh. "Where to begin?" she mused out loud. "The cases are as varied as they are numerous. Initially, we hadn't even considered them to be related because of that."

"And what caused you to reconsider?" Cloud asked curiously.

"The primary thing any of the cases share in common is how little sense they make. A woman, who by all claims deeply loved her husband, murdered him on their thirtieth anniversary. A pizza restaurant owner, who'd just finished paying the mortgage on his property, suddenly burned it to the ground in the middle of dinner service. A doctor who'd been treating a patient for over a year, killed them the day after their recovery and release from the hospital."

Cloud felt a growing sense of exhilaration as Shera listed the cases. "So, you're saying they're all situations where people suddenly started behaving completely opposite to how they had before?"

"Yes, that's a good way to explain it," Shera replied, nodding.

"What did all of these people say about what they'd done afterward?" Cloud asked, trying not to let his excitement show.

"Well, that's where we get to the other similarity between the cases," Shera replied sorrowfully. "They're all dead."

"Wait, what?!" Cloud asked in shock, feeling like a bucket of ice water had suddenly been dumped on him.

"Yes, they…" but whatever Shera was about to say was cut off as a siren suddenly went off in the station. "Damn it, not another!" she exclaimed, before grabbing a piece of paper and quickly writing something down. "Here, these are the addresses of the three incidents I mentioned earlier," she explained, standing up and walking over to Cloud before handing him the paper. "I got permission earlier for you to be able to interview some of the witnesses for your paper, but you have to promise me you'll be respectful and not push them."

"I promise," Cloud quickly confirmed, taking the paper as Shera released her grip on it at his response.

"Thanks, Cloud." And with that, she was out the door, shouting at other officers as they all rushed for their cars.

Cloud took a few moments to look over the addresses on the list while he waited for the chaos in the station to die down a bit. Once things seemed a bit quieter, he left Shera's office, gave a nod to the security guard on his way out, and then made his way to Fenrir to head to his first destination.

* * *

The closest address to the police station, and Cloud's first stop, was the pizza restaurant. As Cloud parked Fenrir, he realized that Shera hadn't been exaggerating; the building was a charred wreck. Two of the four walls were still partially standing, but the rest of the building was essentially gone.

Unsure of how best to proceed, given that the suspect was dead and there was clearly no one still working at the restaurant who he could question, Cloud decided to go door to door to see if he could learn anything about what had happened. Unfortunately, this proved largely futile as people weren't around, didn't bother to answer their doors, or else refused to answer a high school student's questions. After thirty minutes of rising frustration, Cloud gave up and went to lean against Fenrir, overlooking the restaurant as he tried to come up with a new plan.

"A damn shame, isn't it?" an old man's voice said, interrupting his thoughts. "Best pizza place for miles around lost in the blink of an eye."

"You were a regular then?" Cloud asked, turning around to find a white-haired old man clutching a cane on the sidewalk behind him.

"Indeed I was. In fact, I still remember my first meal at Jack's thirty years ago. Made sure to eat there at least once every other week too. Really was the best pizza…" the old man trailed off wistfully.

"Do you have any idea what happened?" Cloud prodded.

The old man shook his head sadly in response. "Not at all. I wasn't there that night, but my friend was, and told me it was the craziest thing he'd seen in his entire life. All of the diners had evacuated as soon as the smoke came billowing out of the kitchen. A short while later, they saw the staff dragging Jack physically out of his restaurant, while he was fighting to get back inside and screaming 'no' over and over. My friend said that he assumed that it was in denial, but then apparently Jack said 'No, let me go, I have to burn it all down.' Doesn't make a lick of sense."

"I thought I heard that he'd died, though?" Cloud asked in confusion.

"He did," the old man answered, nodding slowly. "Apparently had a horrible heart attack shortly after they got him outside. My friend said he'd never seen someone lose so much blood from their nose before…"

Cloud felt his eyebrows rising at this detail, making a quick mental note of the most interesting piece of information so far. "Thanks for your time sir, I don't want to take any more of it, but just know you've been an incredible help."

"Not a problem young man, good luck with whatever it is you're doing," the old man responded, before slowly walking off.

Cloud glanced at the list of addresses, before hopping on Fenrir and heading off to his next destination.

* * *

Cloud's next stop was Midgar's largest hospital. Fortunately for him, Shera had also included the doctor's name next to the address. Without it, he had no idea how he would have figured out where to go.

A short while later, Cloud found himself in an empty waiting room. A lone nurse poked her head out of a backroom as he walked in, a look of surprise on her face. "I'm sorry, are you lost? All patients should have been informed of their new doctor by now…"

"Oh, I'm not here for an appointment," Cloud explained. "I was hoping you'd be able to tell me a bit about what happened?"

The nurse shook her head firmly. "I'm afraid that's not something I can just talk about with anyone, especially not some stranger who just showed up."

"Please, anything at all could be helpful. Are there any small details that might not have seemed important that you _could_ tell me?" Cloud begged.

The woman seemed a little surprised at how desperate Cloud sounded, thinking for a moment before hesitantly responding. "Well, I can't get into any details, but the thing that stood out to me as the most unusual was how much blood he lost from his nose. They already determined that wasn't what killed him, though, so I don't see how that could be any help, but I really can't say anything else."

"No, that's perfect, thank you so much for your time," Cloud replied, excited that a pattern was beginning to emerge. He said farewell to the nurse, before heading back to Fenrir and setting off for the last address on his list.

* * *

It was just an hour before dinner by the time Cloud reached his final destination, a small house in a middle-class residential district on the outskirts of the city. Given the circumstances of this case, Cloud hadn't been sure if anyone would even be at the house, but as he parked Fenrir on the street, he was relieved to see the lights on. He walked up to the door and rang the bell, only having to wait a few moments before a young woman answered, cracking the door open about a foot.

"Can I help you?" she asked hesitantly.

"I'm sorry to bother you so late, I was given this address as a location for a report I'm writing on some of the unusual events happening around the city. Would you be willing to answer a few questions?"

The woman recoiled slightly, her face falling upon hearing the question. "I'm sorry, but I don't want to talk about what happened to mom anymore. I've already told the police everything I know," she answered, moving to close the door.

"I'm terribly sorry, just one question then, please," Cloud begged. "It might help me prevent what happened to your mother from happening to anyone else."

The woman swallowed deeply before slowly nodding her head in response.

"Do you remember if your mom's nose looked like it had been bleeding?" Cloud asked.

The woman's head jerked up to look directly at him, and by her facial expression, Cloud could already tell what the answer was. "H-how did you know? The cops wrote it off as a sign of self-defense from dad, but… are you saying it was something else?"

"I'm sorry, I don't really know yet, but it does help to know that. Thanks for your time and sorry again for your loss."

The woman nodded, clearly fighting back tears, and closed the door softly behind him as Cloud headed back to Fenrir. As eager as he was to talk with Bugenhagen about what he'd learned, the school had already closed by this time, and Cloud had no idea where the teacher lived. Reluctantly, he headed home, determined to meet with the old man first thing the next morning.

* * *

Cloud burst into Bugenhagen's office early the next day, excited to tell him everything he'd learned, and hopeful it would lead to further explanation of what had happened to Aerith. Unfortunately, the first thing he noticed on entering the room was that it was empty.

"I thought you'd been suspended," a voice said from above Cloud, causing him to jump backward in surprise. As he looked up to find the source of the voice, a large red shape leaped off a shelf over the door and landed agilely in front of him.

"Thanks for nearly giving me a heart attack, Red," Cloud responded, shaking his head ruefully. "I _am_ still suspended, thanks for reminding me. I asked Barret if it was okay for me to come on campus to talk with Bugenhagen, and he gave his permission as long as I didn't interfere with any of the tests everyone is taking. Do you know where he is?"

"Overseeing the start of one of those tests you mentioned," Red replied. "He should be back soon though. Today isn't a Materia test, so there's no need for him to oversee the whole thing."

Hearing this, Cloud sat down to wait. "I can't believe this school holds tests after Christmas, basically everything here is completely different from any other school I've gone to," he mused aloud.

Red chuckled softly at this. "Given the normal schedule of only three days of class a week, the students have never really complained. Plus, for these tests, it's only a few hours a day anyway. I can't imagine what missing them is going to do to your grades though," he finished, looking at Cloud from the corner of his eye.

Cloud paled slightly at this and swallowed deeply, realizing that in his focus on the investigation, he'd completely forgotten he wasn't missing just classes. A few moments of silence passed, before the door to the room opened, and Bugenhagen bustled inside.

"And what's happened with you then young man?" he asked as he passed Cloud, and settled down in the chair behind his desk. "You look like you've swallowed a lime."

"Just realizing what I'm missing out on," Cloud muttered before shaking his head to clear it. "That's not what I'm here for though. Yesterday, I was out looking into several of the incidents that have happened around the city, and found some interesting connections between them that I wanted to run by you."

"Oh?" Bugenhagen asked with interest, leaning forward in his chair slightly.

"In all three cases, the suspects were clearly acting in a manner completely opposite to how they normally would have. Not only that, all of them had signs of a nosebleed before they died."

Bugenhagen settled back in his chair as Cloud finished, stroking his beard thoughtfully. "Very interesting indeed."

Several moments of silence passed before Cloud softly cleared his throat. "Do… you think it's related then?" he asked.

"Well, I can't rule out the possibility that you're seeing a pattern you wanted to find, but yes, I would agree that Miss Gainsborough certainly has been acting quite backwards."

"She had a nosebleed after she slapped me at the dance as well," Cloud pointed out. "Do you think it's a side effect of whatever was done to them?"

"The nosebleeds are certainly the most interesting part of what you've found," the old man remarked. "Combined with the behavioral oddities, it would lead me to believe that it's some form of spell that's impacting the brain. Whether the nosebleeds are a side effect, or a direct result of the person attempting to resist this change is unclear, however."

"So, based on that, do you think Sephiroth is responsible for what's happening in the city, or for the change in Aerith?" Cloud asked.

"No," Bugenhagen immediately scoffed derisively. "Sephiroth is a swordsman, like you, he doesn't have the skill to come up with a spell like this. If he did do anything, then it had to have been with help from his parents. The signs do line up uncomfortably close to the research I mentioned before."

"Thanks, I know what to look into next, then," Cloud stated as he got to his feet and moved to the door.

"Don't do anything stupid!" Bugenhagen called after him as he left.

* * *

It only took Cloud a single day to track down, and follow, Hojo to a poorer section of the city than a man of his status would normally enter. He watched from around a corner as the older man furtively glanced around, before abruptly turning into an alley. Cloud waited a few seconds, before quickly rushing over and glancing in. He saw Hojo at the far end, standing over a body shaped pile of blankets, one hand reaching into a deep pocket on his lab coat.

"Sure is a strange place for a research scientist to be hanging out, wouldn't you say sir?" Cloud asked casually as he walked around the corner, a hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

Hojo whirled around at his voice, his hand jerking out of the pocket as if something inside had bitten it, and Cloud thought he was able to make out the spherical shape of a Materia. "W-what are _you_ doing here?" Hojo snarled, his eyes widening in surprise.

"Oh, I just have a few questions about your latest research project," Cloud replied, settling into a stance that would allow him to easily respond to any action Hojo decided to take. "Your old colleague Bugenhagen has told me so much about you."

"Bugenhagen," Hojo said the name like a curse and spat on the ground at his feet. "That senile old fool has no idea what real research is!"

At his loud exclamation, the bundle at his feet shifted, and a woman's head poked out of the blankets. She glanced up at the man in the lab coat above her, her eyes growing wide with fear, before looking over and seeing Cloud with his hand on his sword. The tension in the air was palpable, and she lashed out with one of her legs, catching Hojo off guard, as her foot connected with the back of his knee. As the older man fell to the ground with a curse, she darted to her legs and frantically looked for a way out that didn't involve getting closer to Cloud. Her eyes widened in surprise, however, as he moved out of the way and removed his hand from his sword, giving a small jerk of his head over his shoulder. The woman didn't think twice and darted past him, running away as fast as she could.

"Not used to them fighting back are you?" Cloud taunted as he stepped closer to Hojo, moving back to block the only escape. "Why don't you tell me more about this research of yours in your own words? What were you planning to do to that woman?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, I saw a body and went to make sure the person was okay," Hojo snapped. He tried to stand back up, but winced in pain and dropped back down to a kneeling position.

"We both know that's a lie, and I really don't have time to play games with you. Tell me what I want to know, or I'll make sure you never walk again," Cloud threatened.

Hojo visibly blanched at the threat of violence and took several deep breaths to try and steady himself. "What do you want to know? I'll answer your questions if I can, I swear."

"Your son did something to a girl named Aerith, presumably the same thing you were about to do to that homeless woman. I want to know what the hell it was, and how to undo it."

Cloud wasn't sure how it was possible, but Hojo somehow managed to grow even whiter after he heard Cloud's demand. "I… I can't tell you _that_!" he stammered. "My son would never forgive me if I told you how to reverse that spell!"

"Sephiroth is the last person you need to be worrying about right now," Cloud growled, stepping closer and glaring down at the quivering old man. "If you don't tell me, I'll make you regret it for the rest of your sorry life," he bluffed.

"F-fine, I'll tell you! P-please, just don't kill me!" Hojo begged desperately. "The spell…"

It happened too quickly for Cloud to react. One moment he was standing there over Hojo, the old man kneeling on the ground in front of him, the next he heard the sound of a cloak flapping in the wind, as Sephiroth fell from the roof above and impaled his father through the stomach from behind. Hojo's eyes shot open, and his mouth widened, but the only noise he made was a sharp intake of breath as his arms fell limply at his side, and he slumped forward over the blade.

Sephiroth looked up from his father's body below him, and met Cloud's eyes, his lips forming into a soft smirk as he slowly pulled the long blade out. As Hojo's dead body hit the ground, Cloud noticed a red Materia roll out of his pocket, but his attention immediately zeroed in on the white-haired devil.

"Sephiroth!" Cloud screamed, drawing the Buster Sword.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was honestly one of the hardest ones I've had to write for this entire story. A lot of my initial plans had all of this taking place over a much longer time frame, so I had to come up with some way to condense it all down in a way that still made sense. Same as with this chapter, the next one will be up in a week. On the plus side, the next chapter is the last, so that means this is literally the last week you will ever have to wait to read the next chapter of this story. As always, I really do love to hear your thoughts, so please leave a review if you feel so inclined.


	11. New Year

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very pleased to present the final chapter of New Friends, New Enemies.
> 
> Many thanks to the awesome scionoobydoo and Lichtschwert for both of their help in beta reading this chapter!

"How could you kill your own father?" Cloud demanded, still in shock at what had just happened.

Sephiroth casually flicked his sword, scattering Hojo's lingering blood against the wall of the alley before shrugging.

"He was about to say something stupid. Besides, mother won't mind."

Cloud felt his mouth drop open at this cavalier response, before tightening his grip on his sword and glaring at Sephiroth. "You're a monster."

Sephiroth let out a full-body laugh at this. "People always fear what they don't understand. The work we're doing in this city is far more important than one pitiful man's life, regardless of who he might have been."

"Whatever 'work' you were doing is over, you're going to spend the rest of your life in a prison cell."

Sephiroth scoffed loudly in response. "Oh, am I? And what evidence do you have to back up that claim?" He paused, giving Cloud a moment to think. "That's right, none! I can frame you for Hojo's death just as easily as I framed you last year."

Cloud felt like he'd been punched in the gut at Sephiroth's last words. "What… what do you mean, last year?"

Sephiroth laughed loudly again before replying, struggling to contain his mirth. "That's right, the best part about the whole thing is that you don't even know. What with how your parents sheltered their poor, innocent, little boy."

"What the fuck are you talking about?!" Cloud demanded angrily.

"I'm sure you remember that grisly murder at Junon High last year, it was all anyone talked about for months. What you _don't_ know, however, is that a student was accused of the murder."

Sephiroth smiled cruelly at the confusion written across Cloud's face as he heard this.

" _You_ were that student Cloud. Your parents tried to shield you from what happened by lying to you. You weren't transferred, you were forced out."

Cloud's mind reeled as he tried to process what Sephiroth was saying. He kept playing the scene where his parents had told him about his transfer over and over in his head, struggling to remember if anything had seemed off.

"Unfortunately, the evidence I planted to frame you by shaking the blood from my blade onto that hunk of metal you call a sword wasn't strong enough for them to convict you, especially since you had the shaky alibi of having already reported the sword as missing earlier in the day. Still, the school felt like they had to do _something_ , so they decided to expel you in secret, and then fed the public some bullshit story about how the police were hot on the trail of the murderer."

Cloud reeled backward as the truth slammed into him, all of the pieces fitting together far too well for him to hope that Sephiroth was lying to him. "Why… why did you do it?" he asked softly.

"I was bored," Sephiroth replied nonchalantly, shrugging his shoulders. "Mother had gotten me a new sword for my birthday and I felt like trying it out."

Cloud felt the familiar rage inside him ignite, but this time he stoked its fire, fully in control. "I swear I'm going to make you pay, both for my friend's life and for what you've done to Aerith."

Realizing that a fight in the close confines of the alleyway would benefit Sephiroth more, Cloud carefully, but quickly backed away from him, keeping his eyes fixed on Sephiroth's blade.

Sephiroth followed slowly after him, his eyes filled with amusement, and his body completely relaxed. "You know you can't beat me in a fight."

"You're wrong. You're not as good as you think you are."

Sephiroth just smirked, and then in the blink of an eye charged towards Cloud, his sword piercing ahead aimed directly for Cloud's heart.

Cloud whipped the Buster Sword in front of himself, using the blunt side of the blade to deflect Sephiroth's thrust, before rolling sideways into the main street. Since they were fairly deep into the slums, there were only a few people around and they all scattered at the sight of the two swordsmen attacking each other.

Sephiroth shot out of the alley after Cloud, moving so quickly it almost looked like he was flying across the ground. With the extra space provided by the wider street, Cloud was prepared for the assault and met Sephiroth's swing with one of his own, an explosion of sparks showering outward from where their swords met. The ensuing clash of blades between them was swift and merciless, neither of them saying a single word as they focused entirely on the battle.

After what felt like hours, but couldn't have been more than several minutes, Cloud could feel his muscles starting to strain under the constant pressure Sephiroth was applying. Even as he acknowledged this fact, he could tell at the same time that Sephiroth was also starting to tire, his slashes coming with less power than before. It happened in a moment, almost faster than Cloud could process, a small opening as Sephiroth was knocked slightly off-balance from a particularly powerful parry. Realizing this was his best shot, Cloud lunged for it, putting the last of his remaining strength into this one strike.

Right before his blade made contact with Sephiroth's arm, Cloud was blasted backward, his body slamming violently into the building behind him, causing a cloud of dust and mortar to explode outward. He struggled to take a breath as the wind was knocked out of him, his vision blurry as he struggled to make sense of what had just happened. There was no way Sephiroth would have had a chance to unleash such a powerful spell on him in the middle of their clash, which meant the only explanation was that someone else had cast it.

As Cloud's vision slowly returned along with his breaths, three green orbs in front of him slowly materialized into a pair of eyes and a Materia in the person's hand.

"A beautiful casting of Tornado, my dear," Sephiroth said, as he walked over and placed a hand on Aerith's shoulder. Together they towered over Cloud's broken body, leering down at him.

"Anything for you, honey," Aerith responded in a nauseatingly sweet voice.

"Aerith, it's me, snap out of it!" Cloud shouted desperately. "Fight him!"

In response, Aerith just coked her head to the side and raised one eyebrow in confusion.

"She's mine now," Sephiroth laughed sickeningly, tracing one long finger down the side of Aerith's face. "Such an obedient little puppet. And how fitting it would be to have hers be the hand that ends your pitiful life."

He handed her his sword, and Aerith stepped in front of Cloud, slowly placing the point of the blade over his heart. As the blade passed by his face he felt it nick his cheek, but he didn't even register the pain. All he could think of was how he had failed the woman he loved.

"Aerith… please…" Cloud begged, looking up into the bottomless pits of her eyes. "This isn't you."

Aerith gave no response, she just stood there, motionless, almost like a statue.

"Kill him!" Sephiroth snarled.

In that moment, before his inevitable death, Cloud thought back to that incredible night so many days ago when he and Aerith had gotten to know each other. How she'd drunkenly licked her drink off his face. How beautiful she'd looked in the moonlight as they'd walked through Elena's backyard. How they'd relaxed in the hot tub, learning about each other's pasts. If he was going to die like this, then he wanted to remember Aerith as she truly was, brilliant, cheerful, and full of life, nothing like this empty shell Sephiroth had turned her into.

"I love you," Cloud whispered, resigning himself to his fate.

The blade flashed, quicker than the blink of an eye, cleanly severing through the neck and the white hair around it.

Cloud blinked in surprise, his eyes slowly widening in shock as he watched Sephiroth's headless body collapse to the ground next to him.

"His mother's name," Aerith whispered, barely loud enough for Cloud to hear, before she collapsed to the ground as well, blood gushing from her nose.

Cloud leaped into action, ripping a piece of cloth from his shirt to use to staunch her nosebleed, before gently lifting Aerith into his arms. He rushed back into the alley, grabbed the Materia that had fallen from Hojo's jacket, and then ran for Fenrir as fast as his legs could carry him.

* * *

Cloud made it to the school in record time, thankful he hadn't run into any police cars. Since class was still in session, and no one was around to open the door for him, Cloud used his back to push it open, not willing to let Aerith go for a single second.

"Cloud! Have you seen…" he heard Tifa begin to ask, as he carefully carried Aerith through the door, before turning around to face her.

"What the hell did he do to her?!" Tifa screamed, her tone completely changing as she saw her best friend, covered in blood, lying in his arms.

"It looks worse than it is," Cloud explained quickly. "Most of the blood on her isn't even hers. I need to get her to Bugenhagen as quickly as possible."

"I swear I'm going to kill that bastard the next time I see him," Tifa hissed as they hurried in the direction of the nurse's office.

"Aerith actually beat you to that," Cloud replied, a small bit of mirth entering his voice. "That's where most of the blood came from."

Tifa's pace next to him abruptly faltered as she heard the news, causing her to momentarily fall behind him before she hurried to catch up. "You're going to tell me exactly what happened," Tifa demanded as they reached their destination.

Cloud just nodded as she opened the door to one of the patient rooms for him, stepping inside to gently lay Aerith down on the bed as Tifa rushed off to find Bugenhagen. He felt the exhaustion of the day hit him as the adrenaline pumping through his body finally died down now that Aerith was safe. Cloud grabbed a chair and moved it next to the bed before collapsing down into it to wait. Fortunately, it seemed like Tifa didn't have to search for very long, as the old man in question soon hurried into the room, quickly examining Aerith's body before moving to rummage in one of the cabinets.

"I thought I told you not to do anything stupid. I see you managed to find her though, I assume you're not responsible for her injuries?" Bugenhagen questioned as he began cleaning the blood off of Aerith.

"Of course not, as I already told Tifa, most of that blood is Sephiroth's."

"And where is Sephiroth right now?" Bugenhagen asked. "Not about to break through the school's front doors behind you I hope."

"He's dead," Cloud said simply.

The old man froze momentarily at this statement, before resuming his inspection. "I… see. That's going to complicate things in more ways than one."

"You don't think what he did to her ended with his death?" Cloud asked, even though he already knew the answer.

"Given the coma she appears to be in at the moment, no, I don't believe it has. It's unfortunate Sephiroth was killed, without his knowledge of what was done to her, I'm not sure if she'll ever wake up," Bugenhagen replied regretfully.

Cloud's eyes widened in horror, "No! You can save her, just get rid of the spell he cast on her!"

"Cloud," Bugenhagen said softly. "We don't even know if the spell can be undone in the first place."

"No," Cloud replied firmly. "I _know_ it can be, Hojo implied as much before he was murdered."

Bugenhagen winced at this revelation before responding. "Well, that's encouraging to hear at least, but it still doesn't change the fact that we don't know what they did to her."

"I brought you the Materia that Hojo had on him though!" Cloud pleaded, pointing to where it lay on the medical bed. "Can't you just… I don't know, use it to reverse the spell?"

Bugenhagen slowly shook his head, sorrow filling his eyes. "I'm afraid it's just not that simple my boy. A spell of this magnitude is incredibly powerful, if I just tried to stumble my way through removing it, it's entirely possible I could end up making things even worse."

"Are you saying that we just give up and let her be a puppet for the rest of her life then?!" Cloud demanded angrily, slamming his fist into the arm of his chair.

"No, no, of course not!" Bugenhagen replied soothingly. "Of course I'll try my best to cure her, I just want you to understand that this may be beyond my abilities. At the very least it would be incredibly useful if we knew what the spell's key phrase was."

"His mother's name!"

"I'm sorry, what? Whose mother?" Bugenhagen asked in surprise at Cloud's sudden outburst.

"Sephiroth's mother's name!" Cloud exclaimed in excitement. "It's the last thing Aerith said to me before she passed out, 'His mother's name'!"

"Jenova?"

As the word left Bugenhagen's lips, the Materia lying on the bed next to Aerith let out a soft, unmistakable glow. Cloud leaped to his feet, while Bugenhagen spun to face Aerith as he grabbed the orb.

"Out!" the old man snapped. "I need to focus!"

Cloud ground his teeth in frustration but understood that there was nothing more he could do to help in this situation. He let out a deep breath, gave a nod to Bugenhagen, and left the room, closing the door behind him as softly as he could.

"Cloud, how is she!?" Tifa immediately demanded as the door closed.

Cloud was only able to shake his head softly in response, before slumping down into a chair as the exhaustion from earlier slammed back into him.

"She's still in a coma, but Bugenhagen is doing everything he can to save her," Cloud murmured, staring at his lap. "I'm sorry Tifa, I failed her."

Tifa quickly stepped over and crouched down in front of Cloud, placing her hands on either side of his face before gently tilting his head to look at her.

"Cloud, you did everything you could. None of this is your fault. You found her and you brought her back, that's all that matters. If Aerith were here right now, she'd be angry at you treating yourself like this."

Tifa paused to swallow hard, blinking the tears out of her eyes before continuing.

"Bugenhagen is incredibly good at what he does, we have to have faith in him. And Aerith is strong, she's going to pull through this."

Cloud nodded his head in response, unable to speak through his sorrow. He prayed she was right.

* * *

**Epilogue**

**One Month Later**

Cloud nervously fiddled with the small, wrapped box, as he rang the doorbell. Almost immediately, he heard footsteps and a voice drawing closer from the other side, and he swallowed hard, trying to calm himself.

"Cloud!" Tifa announced happily as she opened the door, loudly enough so everyone inside would know who had arrived. "You're _late_!" she hissed more quietly so only he could hear.

"I know, I know, I'm sorry. The only store that was able to pull it off was on the other side of town and…" Cloud trailed off as he realized there wasn't a good excuse for his tardiness.

Tifa placed a gentle hand on his arm and squeezed encouragingly. "It's fine, I'm sure she's going to love it. Now, stop moping and get in here!" she said, loudly once more, before tugging him inside.

She led him deeper into the house where multiple voices could be heard, growing louder as they approached until they arrived at the living room. Seated at the table, chatting while digging into a decadent chocolate cake, Cloud saw Zack, Vincent, Yuffie, Rufus, the four Turks, and, of course, Aerith.

"Cloud!" Aerith shouted, mirroring Tifa from earlier, as she bounced to her feet and rushed over to hug him.

Cloud embraced her back, clutching her to him as he held her for the first time in what felt like years. "I'm so glad… I was so worried…" he whispered in her ear.

Tifa cleared her throat loudly as she took her seat next to Rufus, causing Cloud and Aerith to break apart, the conversation that had halted to watch their reunion resuming as well.

"Why are _you_ the one crying?" Aerith teased, quickly wiping a tear from her eye.

Cloud let out a short laugh, using his arm to rub his tears away as he smiled back at her. "I'd forgotten how beautiful your smile is."

Aerith blushed lightly, her eyes catching on the small box he was holding as she looked away from his eyes. "Oh, is that for me?"

Cloud nodded in confirmation, holding the box out in his palm for her to take. "Happy Birthday Aerith. I hope you like it."

She snatched it away from him, examining the present and its wrapping for a moment before quickly unwrapping it. Cloud held his breath as she cracked the box open, letting it out in relief as Aerith let out a happy gasp of surprise when she saw what was inside.

"Oh Cloud, it's _beautiful_!" she exclaimed, pulling a silver pendant necklace out to show everyone else before fastening it around her neck.

The necklace's chain was an intricate link of tree roots wrapping around each other. The pendant itself was a small tree, roughly an inch tall. The most striking aspect, however, was the multiple small emerald leaves scattered across the branches, each the exact shade of green as Aerith's eyes.

Before he realized what was happening, Aerith's arms were around his neck and she was kissing him. Cloud lost all sense of time and place as he kissed her back, lost in the wonderful feeling.

"Get a room!" Zack eventually called out, laughing, and causing Cloud to come out of his daze.

"Fine, maybe we'll do just that!" Aerith declared, blushing slightly, before grabbing Cloud's hand and pulling him after her.

"You go, girl!" Tifa shouted, causing Aerith's cheeks to glow an even brighter red as the two of them left the room and headed upstairs.

As soon as they reached her room, Aerith abruptly turned around and quickly kissed Cloud before taking a step back and smiling at him. "I want to officially thank you for saving me," she declared.

Cloud just shook his head in response, smiling back at her. "All I did was help. Bugenhagen said that if you hadn't been fighting the spell as hard as you were, that you would have been under its full control much sooner and we would have lost you forever. Not to mention you're the one who saved _my_ life by not stabbing me through the heart."

Aerith looked slightly flustered to have her thanks turned around on her, but she nodded, conceding the point. "Fine, we're equally responsible for saving the other then."

"I'm just thankful it's all over with and we can get back to the fun times we had before everything went crazy."

"She's still out there Cloud," Aerith whispered, a look of fear entering her eyes that Cloud immediately never wanted to see again.

Cloud placed a hand on each of her shoulders and looked her directly in the eye. "Jenova is a coward, that's why she ran. Thanks to the Materia that was used to control you, we were able to prove that she and her husband had been responsible for the crimes around the city, and the police have sworn they won't rest until she's behind bars. You never have to worry about her again."

Aerith smiled up at him and nodded. "You're right Cloud, mom told me this already, of course, but it's much more reassuring to hear it from you."

"Good, then there's no reason to dwell on what happened anymore."

Aerith smiled before shyly looking down at her feet. "I haven't forgotten what you told me then."

Cloud cocked his head in confusion, not sure what she was referring to.

Aerith took a deep breath before looking up once again to meet his eyes, "I love you too, Cloud."

It was Cloud's turn to turn a bright shade of red. "I… I was just… I thought that… I…" he stammered.

Aerith put her index finger on Cloud's lips to silence him before dragging him down onto her bed. Alone together, at last, the two of them resumed where they'd left off downstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is seriously blowing my mind right now that thirteen years later I'm about to be posting the final chapter of this story and marking it as Complete at last. What an absolutely crazy journey it's been, starting with a massive chapter that came out of nowhere, to me scrambling to come up with an actual story to follow it up with. These last two months, in particular, of wrapping up the final chapters, have been really special. I'm happier than I expected with how well it ended up fitting together, and I hope that everything ended up making at least some sort of sense. A special thanks in particular to any readers still around from when this story was first published, I'm sorry it took so long.
> 
> Now. I'd initially planned on this being the last fanfiction I worked on since it's been such a huge part of my writing experience and felt like a natural endpoint. However. During the rewrite for the fifth chapter of this story, a tiny little idea popped up and then figuratively exploded inside of me. I've been working on it basically every moment of free time I've had since finishing this story. It's a one-shot, not a chaptered work, but it's already passed the twenty thousand word mark. Cloud and Aerith are, of course, the two main characters, and it's a story of two broken people meeting, slowly falling in love, and healing each other. It's drastically different from anything I've ever written before, and I hope people are going to love it. I'm not entirely sure when I'll finish it and be able to post it, but I'm expecting it to be ready by around the end of November.
> 
> Anyways, enough of me going off on a tangent; thanks again for reading this silly little story, and I hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> Oh, and I've attached a bonus chapter as just a little sneak peek of what's to come in the next story.


	12. Sneak Peek

Tifa lay on her back in her bed, one hand resting on her forehead, partially covering her eyes. She was wearing only her underwear under the sheets, her typical choice for the hot summer nights that were so common this time of year in Midgar. "Cloud," she murmured, not looking over at the man in question lying under the sheets on the other side of the queen bed. "I think we should break up."

"I'm sorry," was Cloud's only response, causing her to frown in frustration.

"Don't," she warned. "You know I hate it when you apologize for something that's not your fault."

She could feel his body shifting on the other side of the bed, presumably in discomfort, before stilling again. "Sorry," he whispered.

She let out a loud sigh of exasperation, but left it alone, having already anticipated his follow up based on past experience.

"It's not your fault," she repeated, being completely honest. "I… I just can't take this anymore." She glanced over at him from the corner of her eye and saw him nodding softly in response.

"I know. I get it Tifa, I really do," he replied, his voice surprisingly gentle. "I just wish I could have made you happy."

Tifa shifted over onto her side, putting her back to Cloud, not wanting him to see the tears in her eyes. She took a moment before responding, not wanting him to hear those same tears in her voice either. "You idiot, you did make me happy."

She could feel him shift on his side of the bed again, part of her wishing that he was closing the distance between them, to wrap his arms around her and hold her close against his chest in an embrace. But Tifa knew that that was just a fantasy, something that would never actually happen, and that he was probably just getting comfortable to fall asleep.

"Good night, Tifa," she heard him say quietly.

"Night Cloud," she whispered back. "Sleep well."

She sobbed silently to herself, her body softly shaking, making sure not to let any sound escape her lips, as she thought back on the past few months and wished that things had worked out differently.

When Tifa woke up and rolled over to find the other side of the bed empty the next morning, she wasn't surprised. Hurt, but not surprised. From her experience with him throughout their relationship, Tifa knew this was just how Cloud was, and it only firmed her resolve that breaking up with him had been the right decision.

Slapping her cheeks with both hands, she sat up and let out a deep breath. "Come on Tifa, up and at 'em."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm looking forward to being able to post the entirety of this story as soon as it's ready.


End file.
